You’d think endangered animals would be grateful for help

A girl in a local Detroit area park recently went out of her way to save the life of a small snake her brother was about to kill. As a snake lover myself, I can appreciate her act of kindness, but she should have been more careful. It turned out to be a rattlesnake, and instead of being grateful, it bit her:

When Caylee Kapa picked up the 9-inch snake, she never imagined it could be venomous.

The 13-year-old Madison Heights girl says she didn’t even know Michigan had rattlesnakes. She was simply out for a walk with family at Stony Creek Metropark on Tuesday and picked up the snake in an effort to keep her younger brother, Anthony Kapa, 10, from stomping on it.

“My little brother was going to try to kill it, (so) I was going to try to pick it up and it bit me,” said the eighth-grader at John Page Middle School.

Michigan’s only venomous snake, the eastern massasauga rattlesnake, had sunk its fangs into Caylee’s right index finger — causing a painful bite that required hospitalization and teaching her an important lesson about the snakes she didn’t know existed here.

With very few exceptions, any wild snake — poisonous or non-poisonous — will bite if molested. If you are going to pick one up, it has to be done very carefully, and they should be held at the base of the head just behind their jaws with one hand, with the midsection suspended by the other hand. This girl is lucky she got to a hospital in time.  The Massasauga is endangered in Michigan, and it is illegal to kill one, so the girl may have at least saved her brother from being charged with a crime.

In other animal news, I saw an article earlier which supplies further proof for my theory that coyote-wolf hybrids are a growing threat:

When a pair of coyotes came padding toward the men, they paused. Surely the animals would turn tail and disappear into the forest. In fact, no: This pair acted fearless, and came closer and closer to the astonished hikers. When a mere 20 feet separated man from canid, one hiker raised his camera to his eye. The resulting photograph would soon become crucial evidence: Within minutes of the shutter click, the coyotes, who had moved down the trail, intercepted and viciously set upon Mitchell. The singer screamed and may have tried to run, an action that would have exacerbated the attack. Drawn by the commotion, hikers from both directions raced to her side, scared off the coyotes, and dialed 911. But Mitchell was already in critical condition. Airlifted to the hospital with bite marks covering most of her body, she died the following day.

Cape Breton Highlands rolls over 366 square miles of elevated forest and open swale. About 100 eastern coyotes make their living inside the park, though the animals have inhabited it only since the 1980s. The coyote evolved as a hunter of small mammals in the Great Plains, but within the past half-century the species has expanded its range to the entire lower 48 and to every Canadian province. “We’re among the last places to get them,” says Derek Quann, the park’s resource-conservation manager. In Quann’s park, the animals eat hare and small rodents but, working in groups in the deep snows of late winter, have also been known to take down 1,200-pound moose an astonishing feat, considering that western coyotes neither hunt in groups nor prey on anything larger than sheep or calves. Wolves, however, routinely do both, which raises the question: What exactly is an eastern coyote?

It’s appearing quite likely that it’s not a coyote, and not a wolf, but a hybrid:

“The coyote is an experimenter,” [Derek Quann, park resource-conservation manager] says. “It will try things, and if it succeeds it will learn that behavior and pass it on.” Unfortunately, many coyotes have learned to link people with food: sometimes garbage, sometimes kibble intended for pets. Though Cape Breton forbids feeding wildlife, visitors do it all the same. In the days following the Mitchell attack, Quann says, “we went to extensive lengths to curtail that learning.” He has since killed four additional animals, including one that, rangers determined, was also involved in the attack. These coyotes, he says, were “possible pack mates of the first two.”

Quann uses the word pack warily, preferring the wonkier “cohesive family social group.” That’s because pack is associated with wolves, and wolves, as we know, can bring out the worst in people. But, yes, Quann says with a reluctant sigh, “it’s pretty well accepted these coyotes are wolf hybrids.”

Well, here in Michigan, the Department of Natural Resources is calling them coyotes and allowing people to shoot them, but one of the ones my friend shot after his dogs were killed weighed 100 lbs. — far too large for a true coyote. Seems the government is loathe to use the w-word:

…they’re introducing wolves with taxpayers’ money, then paying off the ranchers who lose livestock with taxpayers’ money, lying to the public, and covering everything up.

Why, you would almost think there was no accountability!

Little wonder the Fish and Game folks are using the coyote loophole. Wolves are federally protected, and on the Endangered Species list, which means shooting them is illegal both federally, and in Michigan. Any killing of wolves — even when state sanctioned  – is a bureaucratic mess.

You’d almost think they don’t want people to be afraid of wolves.