Prudence Island girl dragged toward woods by attacker
PRUDENCE ISLAND — An animal that wildlife experts believe to be a coyote attacked a 7-year-old girl on Prudence Island on Dec. 30, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her toward the woods.
But the girl’s white American Labrador, named Kelly, fought the attacker off and saved her from injury.
According to what a Department of Environmental Management representative from the Fish and Wildlife division told Portsmouth police, this would be the first recorded coyote attack on a person in Rhode Island.
Denise Allard, the mother of 7-year-old Lauren, said her daughter had gone to play in their back yard at 200 Daniel Avenue after 4 p.m., right around dusk. The family’s 5-year-old Labrador, which weighs about 80 pounds, went with Lauren.
Ms. Allard said she went outside to check on Lauren who was at the back of their property near the woods when she heard Kelly (the dog) “barking frantically” and Lauren screaming. Lauren ran toward her mother, screaming and holding her arm and had “the fear of God all over her face.”
Lauren told her mother that she had heard rustling in the woods and had thought it was their neighbor and his beagle. When Lauren got closer to investigate, she said she saw what she thought was a dog that was taller than her Labrador and was a black/brown color. The description that Lauren gave of the animal matched a coyote sighting by her neighbor a short while earlier. No dogs living nearby fit the description.
When Ms. Allard spoke to a Department of Environmental Management wildlife biologist he concluded that it must have been a coyote.
“When it spotted her, it charged her,” Ms. Allard said, repeating how Lauren described the attack.
Wearing only a long-sleeved shirt and a vest, Lauren was bitten on the arm. Lauren said that the coyote pulled her by the arm toward the woods. As Lauren tried to tug away from the animal’s grip, Kelly jumped in and bit the attacker's rear leg.
Ms. Allard said Lauren remembers hearing a yelp as she was freed, and then ran away. But it’s unclear if the yelp came from the coyote or from Kelly.
Kelly received a small puncture wound on the underside of her neck during the tussle.
“If it wasn’t for Kelly biting this animal ... I don’t even want to think about it,” Ms. Allard said.
Because she wore a shirt, Lauren’s skin was not broken by the bite. Ms. Allard spoke with Lauren’s doctor and a person from the Board of Health about the bite. She was advised to throw away the shirt and wash Lauren’s arm since rabies can sometimes be transmitted through contact with saliva. Lauren has shown no signs of redness or swelling in the area that she was bitten.
Kelly was up-to-date on her rabies vaccination but was given an additional booster and will be quarantined in the Allard’s home for 30 days. Ms. Allard says she’s observing Kelly’s wound for infection, but that the dog is doing well.
After the attack
Both Lauren and Kelly are shaken up, Ms. Allard said. Lauren does not want to play in the back yard, and Kelly often barks at the woods, she said, for, it seems, no reason.
Ms. Allard said she too is afraid to let her daughter and the dog in the back yard. Living on Prudence Island for 10 years, Ms. Allard said she had rarely spotted a coyote until the past year. Now she sees them in her yard and the coyotes appear “very comfortable” near houses. She said that during this time she has seen fewer foxes and raccoons, which had been numerous around her house.
How many coyotes are on the island (Ms. Allard said that just a few days after the attack on her daughter, hunters found a ravaged deer carcass) and what is bringing them so close to people, Ms. Allard wants to know. What are the coyotes eating, she asks, and is that food source disappearing?
As a bow hunter, Ms. Allard knows that coyotes come out at dusk to hunt so it is unlikely this one was rabid. Lauren weighs only 50 pounds and could have been considered prey by the coyote.
Ms. Allard says she did not get sufficient answers to these questions when she contacted DEM representative Charles Brown who was notified of the attack by police. She said she was even more disappointed by Mr. Brown’s response for an action plan.
“What I got from DEM is there is no authority (of who can deal with this attack) and that concerns me,” Ms. Allard said. “They’re leaving it up to the public.”
Mr. Brown did not return a phone call.
Prudence Island police officer Glenn Young said he has had several contacts with Mr. Brown regarding this incident. Officer Young said that Mr. Brown told him that DEM will not send out an enforcement officer. Instead, residents should take precautions against attracting coyotes by ridding property of habitats for rodents, which coyotes eat; by being cognizant of food smells on a person; and supervising young children while they are outside, especially after dusk.
Officer Young said coyotes have been sighted on the island for about eight years and those sightings have become frequent in the past two years. “They’ve been seen in just about every area of the island,” he said.
Some people on Prudence have experienced the loss of livestock or pets, Officer Young said. He has been interviewing residents for a report of coyote sightings and of coyotes taking prey. While he does not believe that Prudence Island has a greater coyote problem than Aquidneck Island, in the past year Officer Young has taken reports from a handful of people who have lost small livestock to coyotes and another handful who lost dogs or cats.
“As a rule, Portsmouth police action is not to destroy an animal just because it’s present. However if it poses a threat to a person, then we’ll take the necessary action,” Officer Young said. “Had I been dispatched to that call, I would have looked for that animal and made an effort to destroy it.”
yet another reason why we all love dogs so much. What a great animal, er family member!!
"Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made." ~Roger Caras
I like the part where the public is advised not to smell like food.
Ms. Allard has run up against the usual stonewalling when complaints are made about coyotes. Maybe RIDEM won't do anything about nuisance wildlife, but USDA has a program to deal with it. APHIS Wildlife services is a branch of the USDA that's extremely unpopular with defenders of animals like coyotes, but it's an option that few people seem to know about and that local wildlife managers won't tell you exists. Contact info is: Rhode Island Wildlife Services State Director, 463 West Street, Amherst, MA 01002; Phone: (413) 253-2403.
If Gov Carcieri is still looking for places to cut the state budget, I'm thinking he should take a good look at RIDEM wildlife biologists. Telling people not to smell like food is hardly helpful advice.
Just another example about how relying on the Government for anything other than bureaucratic blabber is a mistake. God help us through the Obama years and his quest for government to control everything...including your health care.
Thankfully, this little girl (with help from her loyal dog) escaped serious injury. I only hope she's not too scarred by this...
I'm glad everything turned out OK. However, does anyone else find it strange that this little 7 year old girl was out playing by herself after dark?
Toopster: Agreed.
JADELIGHTUSA: Are you a complete and utter moron? She was in her back yard...has the failure of a 'for our own protection' government caused this? Idiot.
If only we held the same conditions that forced the morals/principles/beliefs of the frontiersman, people would thrive through common sense, or die because they were stupid.
Addenedum....The little girl or her parents did nothing wrong, and I'm glad she's OK. Sometime's life happens to the best of us.
But moron's like JADELIGHTUSA who want to place blame, will hopefully be eaten. Stinkin' liberal/Socialist government advocate.
They did nothing wrong? You don't send little kids out to play by themselves in the dark. Everybody knows that's a fact. You're the idiot if you do.
I'm certainly glad Lauren is alright, although I'm disappointed with the "coyote hysteria" promoted here on the island. Why wasn't an animal control authority or peace officer dispatched to investigate incident. The local volunteer fire dept. responded to an "emergency"call, none of us are environmental experts or biologists. True coyotes have been sighted, but many more dogs are seen everyday. Please let us keep to the known facts, rather than conjecture when crying "wolf (coyote)", I would hate to see a control program implemented without a shred of evidence, research, or apparently intelligent thought. Where is our animal control officer, the position hasn't been replaced since Mr. Canario passed away (not due to coyote attack, but old age), if we had a state or town rep here maybe a true investigation could have been conducted (track analysis, scat analysis, etc), instead we get sensationalized media coverage which just gives us Islanders and the wildlife here a bad rep. Please lets try to get some firm facts, before this is called a "documented coyote attack"
This is pretty typical of the way these things go... let's blame the victims and trivialize the entire incident... that's helpful. As for hysteria, I haven't noticed any. And you don't need to be a biologist to observe that the island population of coyotes is robust and growing... all you need is eyes in your head. But by all means let's do nothing and wait for the next incident, which might not turn out quite so well.
If you're worried about canine attacks, better get rid of pet dogs first. Statistics all show dog attacks on children far exceed wildlife attack of any sort. If you're frightened or concerned about possible wildlife attack then maybe you shouldn't live next to or in the woods, please don't make what little woods and open lands that are left nto city parks. Maybe the numerous deer gut piles evident while walking around the island show a decrease in coyote population, rather than an increase, you didn't see this many gut piles last year, even though the deer taken was greater.
She called the cops and they sent the fire department? Where were the cops?
If people choose to live in or near the woods they should always keep in mind there are animals and creatures living in that woods, which is their home as well.I've seen ,on a couple of occasions,coyotes attack my neighbors pets (cats) in the early morning.If you love your pet-Don't let it outside!
I've noticed that when food becomes scarce coyotes become more aggresive. I had one jump a 6' gate on the side of my house, grab my tenants cat and jump back over. When trying to shu it away and retrieve the remains of kitty, it looked at me like I was a piece of KFC, and left only after I went bolistic.But, you know, its an animal.We are, in many places, in their neighborhood.The job of the police dept is not to protect you from every coyote that is spotted unless it is posing a threat.Common sense should be used. Who would have thought it would attack a little girl.Normally they are more afraid of you than you of them.Unless, of course, they are very very hungry.
The dog attack argument is not very logical when one considers that 65 million dogs live in people's homes in this country, in direct contact with humans every day. When 65 million coyotes are living in the same circumstances you might be able to make that sort of comparison; in the meantime, it's a not very sophisticated attempt to divert people from the central issue.
I appreciate you telling me where I can and cannot live, and that you ascribe to me the power to turn woodlands into parks. The fact is that I pre-date the coyote population on PI by a considerable margin, and it really frosts me that the welcome mat has been set out for an animal that has no particular business even being in New England. much less the island. The coyote is a prairie animal and can be accurately described as a hybridized invasive species. I think it's interesting that we go around ripping up autumn olive, but an invasive terrestrial predator gets a free pass.
I'm also annoyed by the suggestions that some wildlife managers and others have for living with coyotes. The suggestion that we should live with them at all seems presumptuous to me. Then we're told not to do anything that might attact them... chop down your bushes so they can't hide in undergrowth, get rid of your bird feeders, don't barbecue, keep your pets inside, watch your kids every second that they're outside, don't go out at night, carry a stick when you walk, and now, my new favorite, try not to smell like food. In other words, the coyotes are here now, and they OWN THE PLACE. We must alter our lives to accommodate them. If we talk about getting rid of them, we're painted as either hysterical or haters of wildlife. It's absurd. All I want is the the same environment I had before the coyotes were awarded diplomatic immunity status.
That said, the question about why the fire dept was sent to a police call is a good one.
I don't know how someone can say that a child shouldn't be outside in their own yard at 4:00, it wasn't even dark yet.
It doesn't really matter if the animal was a dog or coyote, it needs to be destroyed. I don't want my 4 year old being scared to go out in the yard or feel like I need to watch him like a hawk every single second while he's playing. It's a small island and having wild animals threatening the population is not ok. I know lots of pets that have mysteriously disappeared near my own house. It's very scary.
If it was a human preditor threatening children, there would be no hesitation in capturing and getting rid of him or her. Yet a coyote attempts to drag a young child away and the authorities dispense advise one might expect in Dear Abby. Eliminate the sources of natural food or prey and a hungry coyote likely will be even more of a threat to young children and domestic pets.
How did these animals arrive on the island anyway?
RivExPat says: How did these animals arrive on the island anyway?
Probably the same way the huge deer population began on Nantucket, I would guess; they swam.
Who could imagine what could drive such an animal to take off on that long journey, leaving the mainland, and a pack or mate, where food should have been at least as plentiful as. I could imagine a more likely scenario of a coyote somehow getting aboard a vessel traveling to Prudence. Regardless, if the problem has reached a point where children and pets are at risk, the animal(s) either should be killed or trapped and relocated. This isn't a case of humans encroaching on the territory of a native animal. It's just the opposite.
Sure, because you normally see Wile E. Coyote and his ACME suitcase waiting for the Prudence Ferry.
A coyote stowing away in a car or on the ferry??? Get Real!!!
I suppose deer waterski or even hang-glide to the island
Shoot the coyote. Make a rug out of it. Done.
