JEFF CAPLAN'S MY MINUTE OF NEWS
Jeff Caplan’s Minute of News: The new gang in SF takes aim at dogs
Oct 2, 2024, 7:00 AM
(Mike Lynch/Adirondack Daily Enterprise via AP, File)
Editor’s note: This is an editorial piece. An editorial, like a news article, is based on fact but also shares opinions. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and are not associated with our newsroom.
SALT LAKE CITY — San Francisco has been getting some pretty bad publicity lately. Downtown businesses moving out, homelessness, crime – you’ve heard it all. Now, add a gang of coyotes to San Francisco’s problems.
If you want to call them packs, sure. In one sense, they’re just like the ones you’d see howling on a hilltop in a national park. But these are city coyotes. Hardened by life on the streets, wise to the ways of humans and if you’re a small dog they’re just as deadly as the bloods or the crips.
These gangs don’t deal drugs. They deal death to pets.
It’s not enough to just prowl public parks. These urban jackals are also expanding their turf into residential areas and they’re picking off the dogs — running away with pomeranians, pugs and small pooches. And because it’s San Francisco, a lot of pet owners are complaining they don’t tranquilize them, they don’t shoot them, they don’t even remove the coyotes. Instead, they post signs in parks.
The Wall Street Journal points out that in San Francisco, animal lovers love coyotes a lot less, but they’re drowned out by people saying “Humans have encroached and we have to learn to co-exist.”
Which is what you say when it’s not your dog that got swiped.
California actually bans coyote removal. They don’t kill, they do not sterilize, they do not do anything.
So little dogs in Frisco are being dressed in coyote vests. It has spikes coming out that make a Chihuahua look like a porcupine because in San Francisco, with coyotes running unhindered, it’s a dog-eat-dog world.
Jeff Caplan is the host of Jeff Caplan’s Afternoon News on KSL NewsRadio. Follow him on Facebook and X.