Wildlife Taking Over

We're sure it has nothing to do with cuts in the Animal Control sector:

• A Lincoln Park neighborhood woman says she is fearful for people walking their dogs on the North Side after a very close encounter with a pack of coyotes Tuesday morning.
  
  As WBBM Newsradio [...] reports, Kate Dodge was out with her 20- and 50-pound leashed dogs, Gordy and Madara, before daybreak, when she saw the not-so-uncommon sight of coyotes near the corner of Clark Street and Armitage Avenue.
  
  This time, she says there were three coyotes.
  
  “They were maybe 50 feet from me, so we stopped,” she said.
  
  Instead of moving on, Dodge said, they coyotes approached.
  
  “Two stopped 20 feet away and kind of just branched out a little bit around me,” Dodge said. “The third one ran right in, and it was within a foot of us.”

Of course they did - they're hunting. Here's the truly hilarious quote of the year though:

• “We’ve taken it for granted that we can mutually exist,” said Dodge. “I certainly don’t want to create any hype, but I was completely unprepared for this morning’s little episode.”
  
  “This coyote had no fear of me,” she said.

Co-exist? Not a chance in hell lady. You sound like that idiot that used to talk to Grizzly Bears in Alaska. Or the cougar victims throughout the Rockies. Once animals lose their fear of humans, all bets are off, and evolutionarily speaking, the animals are way better prepared for these types of encounters than men,. women and children. That isn't to say we should slaughter every animal we run across (which we're sure some bleeding hearts will accuse us of supporting), but wild animals conditioned to avoid humans and their habitats do much better in the long run.