
The Bay Area’s long, furry nightmare is finally over.
A coyote that bit five people, including two young children, in the last eight months was caught and killed on Thursday in Moraga, a suburb of about 16,000 east of San Francisco, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced on Friday.
“It’s such a relief for the community,” Capt. Patrick Foy of the Department of Fish and Wildlife said in an interview on Friday. “They can finally enjoy the outdoors again.”
The animal, an adult male, had menaced a two-mile area in Moraga and neighboring Lafayette since last July, but Captain Foy said a team of United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services personnel finally caught it Thursday morning in a padded leghold trap, off a stretch of the Calle La Mesa road just north of Campolindo High School.
Then came the anticipation. The Department of Fish and Wildlife’s forensics lab compared the DNA collected from the coyote with samples taken from each of the five victims. The process took most of the day, Captain Foy said.
had been laying traps in places near where the coyote attacked people and using coyote urine to try to catch the aggressive animal for months, Captain Foy said. The Department of Fish and Wildlife, the United States Department of Agriculture, the Moraga and Lafayette Police Departments and Contra Costa County Animal Services had all been part of what he characterized as an all-hands-on-deck effort.
Several other coyotes were caught and euthanized before the culprit was trapped, Captain Foy said, including one about a week ago.