Three times yesterday, residents in a cluster of towns in southeastern New Hampshire called police to report an aggressive coyote.
The first caller, at 8.40am said a coyote had attacked their vehicle. Twenty minutes later, the second caller, a 62-year-old woman, said a coyote attacked her and her dogs on her enclosed porch. Then came a third call, at 11am, with news that the coyote had been strangled by a protective father.
Ian O'Reilly had been walking on a trail in the town of Exeter with his wife and three children when a coyote latched onto their 2-year-old son's jacket and pulled him to the ground, the father told WMUR9.
O'Reilly and his wife tried to pull the boy away, kicking at the animal and shooing it away. It didn't work. Eventually, O'Reilly told WMUR9 that he was able to wrestle the coyote to the ground - and choke it to death.
"In the middle of the moment you're not really thinking or recording a whole lot," O'Reilly told WMUR9. "It's really just instinct. The fact that when we tried to kick and push and get rid of him, it became clear that he was not disengaging."