I know I should not feel this way, but I can’t but help feel that the upswing in coyote attacks in California represents some kind of cosmic justice. Especially when I read lines like this….

Authorities dissuade people from hunting renegade coyotes themselves and suggest that they instead make noise or throw objects to scare them from neighborhoods.

Wardens have spotted the coyote that tried to drag a 2-year-old girl from her front yard Tuesday in Lake Arrowhead, about 65 miles east of Los Angeles, but did not have a clear shot to fire. They have since set up traps for it.

Authorities were also investigating reports of two possible attacks earlier this year in the same resort town in which a coyote may have bitten two young children in the buttocks as their father barbecued on the deck.

In the latest case, police said her mother was photographing the toddler and her siblings in front of the house when she ran inside to put the camera down. That’s when a coyote tried to make off with the toddler.

The girl was treated for wounds to the head and neck, but was expected to survive.

Dotti Edwards, a neighbor, came home after the attack and spotted a scrawny coyote in the street. Her neighbors have complained of coyotes in recent weeks with reports of the wild animals sleeping in yards and pestering residents.

“They’re so brazen right now,” she said. “They just stand there and look at you.”

Coyotes are not stupid. If they know that the worst that will happen to them is that people will try to “scare” them they will have no fear. But a clear eyed understanding of nature is not politically correct in California.