An environmental monitoring and cleanup effort is underway in the Windy City.
An innovative program has been launched in which a vermin control specialist - actually about 250 of them - have been brought in and they have the complete "run of the Loop to help deal with rats and mice."
And it'a all very natural...or at least mostly.
Unfortunately for the city's beleaguered unemployed, the specialists are Coyotes
The coyote to the right was caught on video running loose in the middle of Chicago at 3:00 am on Monday morning. The police didn’t seem to know what it was doing there, but Brad Block, a supervisor for the Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control told Chicago Breaking News that the coyote is let loose in the city to monitor the rodent population:
The animal has the run of the Loop to help deal with rats and mice. He said no one has called today to complain. “He’s not a threat…. He’s not going to pick up your children,” Block said. “His job is to deal with all of the nuisance problems, like mice, rats and rabbits.”
Block told Chicago Breaking News that the animal is outfitted with a GPS collar to track its whereabouts while it hunts mice, rats, and any other small tasty animals.
Given some of the jobs I have had and have head about over the years, ther are worse things to do.
Like being a TSA groper, I suppose.
Or a collection agent.
I have no idea why we have to have perfectly good jobs handed over to so glorified dogs who work for vermin sushi.
OK.. really, the animals are out cleaning up vermin while sending valuable data to researcher who are trying to learn more about how coyotes adapt to modern cities. It is part of a larger study.
More on the program is here
Originally known as ghosts of the plains, coyotes have now become ghosts of the cities, occasionally heard but rarely seen. Although a relatively recent phenomenon, coyotes have become the top carnivores in an increasing number of metropolitan areas across North America. This includes one of the largest urban centers in the Midwest — the Chicago metropolitan region. However, compared to other urban wildlife, we know very little about how coyotes are becoming successful in landscapes dominated by people.