PASCO COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) — Chip Revels wishes he would have known about coyote activity in the area before he let his little dog Bitzy out early Monday morning.
That was the last time he saw her.
“She wanted to go outside to go tinkle and I let her out,” said Revels. “Pretty scary. She was screaming and crying and I thought a bird had her or a hawk or owl, so I came running and I wasn’t fast enough. I grabbed a lawn chair and went over there and the coyote had jumped the fence and got her.”
Revels lives in a subdivision in Hudson, Florida, in Pasco County in an area that is by no means rural.
Revels said he thought coyotes steered clear of developed areas. He recently moved into his home, located in a neighborhood with a golf course and tidily kept homes.
According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Foundation, coyote interactions in Florida are not uncommon. On its website, the agency educates the public on how to avoid wild animals and how to safely scare them away.
Last month, a coyote snatched a family’s small chihuahua from the front yard of their home in New Port Richey, Florida. The homeowner was able to scare the animal away, but it had already injured the pet so severely that it had to be put down.
Revels says he hopes his experience helps to educate the public.
“I don’t want anybody to go through what I’m going through right now,” he said.
For more information about coyote’s visit the FWC website.
