The San Francisco Botanical Gardens played host to a hunt last weekend as wildlife officers tracked and killed a trio of coyotes. According to authorities, their hunt for coyotes was opened after a coyote attacked a five year-old girl in Golden Gate Park, which surrounds the Botanical Gardens.
Patrick Foy, a California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman, said that two of the coyotes were located and shot on Saturday. The third was taken down on Sunday.
The attack happened on Friday, June 28. A five year-old girl was playing near the garden during a summer camp field trip to Golden Gate Park and the Botanical Gardens when the coyote bit her. The girl was rushed to a local hospital and treated for the bite wound, according to statements made by the girl’s mother, Helen Sparrow, to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Sparrow said that her daughter had started running from the coyote, but tripped, and the coyote bit her hindquarters while she was down. At the hospital the girl received stitches and a rabies vaccine as a precautionary measure. According to the doctors who treated Sparrow’s daughter, rabies is rare in coyotes, but when a wild animal bites a human it’s always better to be cautious. Rabies causes unusual aggression in normally-timid animals, once it progresses to a certain stage.
The Botanical Gardens site was closed following the attack.
According to Foy, any mountain lion, bear, or coyote that attacks a person must be killed and tested for rabies. DNA samples are also taken during the post-mortem examination of the animal.
Officers investigating the attack managed to obtain samples of the animal’s DNA from the girl’s bite wound. Scientists are now attempting to match that sample to to the coyotes who have been culled. If a match does not materialize, agents will go back on the hunt, and continue until they capture or kill the animal who attacked the girl.
