STEPHEN RICCIO
QUYON Jan. 5, 2021
A vicious coyote attack on a deer on rue Saint Andrew in Quyon on Jan. 5 made for a rare occasion, especially for one resident who saw the predators right outside of her house, just minutes before the attack took place.
Cecile Dumont, who lives on rue Ann in Quyon, said she was woken up at around 6 a.m. by . . .
her cat making unusual squeals, to which she responded by running downstairs.
“I looked out my window and I could see seven or eight coyotes in front of my neighbor’s [house] and then they ran right in front of my place and over to my other neighbor’s [house] and then into the bay area right by where the Quyon ferry is,” Dumont explained.
“I went back upstairs to bed – I wasn’t up there for more than 10 minutes – and then I heard what sounded like a really bad dog fight and I thought, ‘Holy crap, those coyotes got something.’”
While the coyotes were out of sight by the time she went back downstairs to look, she would end up coming across the coyotes’ victim an hour later. Dumont typically walks dogs for a local daycare provider in the morning, and she was making her way down rue Saint Andrew when she saw the deer, just next to the grass area behind St. Mary’s Church.
“Here if I didn’t see the little deer down on the ground, [there] was nothing left to it but it’s head,” she said. “And [the deer was] right by St. Mary’s school, pretty brazen when they come out right into town and if there had been school there today, the kids would have seen that.”
Dumont said her and her neighbors are used to hearing coyotes howling at night, but she’d never seen a coyote in town, much less an entire pack of them.
Jacques Prud’homme, a Municipality of Pontiac employee, was in Quyon that morning when he ran into what was left of the deer on rue Saint Andrew.
Prud’homme said he could see a trail of blood and gore heading back towards the forest area, and initially he and a Quyon man who found themselves standing over the deer speculated that such a successful kill might have been by wolves.
That was at least until Dumont came across them, as she made her way home from dropping off the dogs she had just walked.
“That wasn’t wolves, it was coyotes,” Dumont recalled telling the men. “I saw them and I heard them.”
Prud’homme ended up picking up the deer and throwing it in his truck to dispose of it at the request of his boss.
Dumont said that anyone with pets that roam should be wary after such a bold coyote attack.
“I am concerned, I wouldn’t let my cat out – she goes out on my deck during the day – but I certainly wouldn’t let her out after dark that’s for sure.”
“It’s going to have an ill effect on our deer for sure, they’ve just discovered their favourite meal,” she said.
