A wayward coyote kicked off the holiday season on Tuesday, halting downtown Fort Myers foot traffic and drawing state wildlife officers after it wound up stranded on a parking garage near a luxury waterfront hotel.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and others responded to reports of a coyote at the parking garage adjacent to the Luminary Hotel, 2200 Edwards Drive, on Nov. 25, where they spent at least hour trying to devise a plan to remove the coyote from the ledge safely.
Fort Myers Police and Fort Myers Fire Departments plotted with FWC on the capture and closed roads surrounding the incident.
However, the animal jumped over the barrier of the parking garage before FWC officers could execute a rescue mission. It ran toward Centennial Park and the Caloosahatchee River, evading them, said Bradley Johnson, public information officer for the FWC.
The coyote was there for multiple hours, Johnson said. Officers think it ended on the ledge after maintenance workers frightened it.
Brownish orange and appearing skittish, the wild canine was not seen again.
Social media from the Luminary Hotel indicates its team saw the canine spotted on the upper level of the city-managed parking garage and immediately notified the authorities.
“Our guests and staff were never at risk, and hotel operations continued as normal,” the post indicated. “We appreciate the quick response from all agencies involved and the community’s concern as the situation unfolded.”
They added a silly note to the experience.
“Don’t worry, we offered an early check-in and some Bonvoy points to get him off the ledge,” the social media post read.
Coyotes are growing in population, and they’ve turned up in every corner − and now the ledge at a luxury hotel − of Southwest Florida, an expansion that’s both a marvel of adaptability and a source of unease for residents, as the cunning canines continue to reshape the region’s ecological and human landscape.
As Southwest Florida continues to grow, people are edging them out of their natural areas. Coyotes typically hunt small animals and can run up to 40 mph with sightings reported recently, especially in Cape Coral.
There are no reliable population counts, wildlife officials say, but coyotes now live throughout the Sunshine State.
In 1983, Florida’s wildlife agency found coyotes in 18 counties in 1983; by 2007, they were in all 67.
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This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Stranded coyote brings early holiday chaos to downtown Fort Myers
Reporting by Tayeba Hussein and Amy Bennett Williams, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Fort Myers News-Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
