Suspects Considered Wily if Not Dangerous

Coyotes have long been notorious for chomping on small pets and children, but in recent years they've detoured into more esoteric realms, such as foot fetishes, purse snatchings and nouvelle cuisine.

Saturday night, as 27-year-old Kyle Stone soaked in a hot tub at Irvine's Quail Meadows apartment complex, he felt a stinging pain on his head. Spinning around, he discovered his assailant was a coyote, which quickly scampered away, police said.

Authorities believe the four-legged intruder "may have mistaken the resident's head for a food source," Irvine Police Lt. Rick Handfield said.

And, no, the victim wasn't wearing a fluffy toupee or meat-scented hair gel, said Handfield, who has been fielding odd questions from the media, including whether Stone had "tabby-colored hair."

Close encounters of the coyote kind have taken some strange turns over the years. The trend dates to at least 1947, when a pair of coyotes at Yellowstone National Park grew so accustomed to tourists that the animals were "extensively observed begging for food and posing for pictures," according to a 2004 UC Davis study on coyote attacks. Before that, park visitors were "lucky to even see a glimpse" of a coyote.

A similar pattern has evolved in Southern California. As housing tracts encroach on wilderness, some coyotes lose their natural fear of humans. A "wildlife-loving general public" that rarely confronts coyote visitors has also emboldened the animals, UC Davis researchers concluded.

Clashes with the varmints have soared over the last decade, said Steve Martarano, a spokesman with the state Department of Fish and Game.

In San Juan Capistrano nine years ago, coyotes charged two women and took their purses, according to the UC Davis report.

A year earlier, at a Pavilions grocery store in Laguna Niguel, a coyote brazenly strolled through the automatic doors, padded down Aisle 6 past the canned fruit, browsed the magazine section and vaulted over the meat counter, according to the Orange County Register.

"I've been in the grocery business 30 years and I've never had a coyote come in the store," the manager told the paper.

Some urban coyotes appear to have developed a fixation on human feet.