A Woman Spent 10 Minutes Fending Off a Coyote With a Stick

Move in on an animal’s territory and you’re bound to have some overlap from time to time. Here’s an article (from freaking 1985) arguing for coyotes’ right to exist in residential areas. There’s a solid chance some live near you. Attacks on humans are rare, and almost half of those taking place in the U.S. between 1970 and 2015 have happened in California. There are two known fatalities of humans since they started keeping track of that stuff.

All right.

With that established, a New York woman, Marcy Sterlis, had herself an estimated 10-minute ordeal with one of the canines during a vacation in Cape Cod. The incident, which was captured by nearby fisherman (you can see some of that footage above), happened on Thursday. Sterlis is uninjured but told a local FOX affiliate, WFXT, that the run-in caused her some lingering distress.

“My voice is still really hoarse from screaming so much [that] morning,” she said. “I was so scared.”

Sterlis says she went on a hike by herself along the beach. She says it was just before noon when she and the animal crossed one another’s path. Note that it did get unusually close.

“I sat down to put my sneakers back on and as I was getting up, I look over and this coyote was four or five feet from me,” she said.

Sterlis says that she started carrying a stick with her last year because, as she identified through footprints in the sand, there are lots of coyotes walking through the Cape (it seems likely that some good food washes up on the beach).

“I just got up and I started screaming and pushing at him with the stick,” she told WHDH. “I was in a battle with this coyote for about 10 minutes… That coyote was not giving up.”

She says the animal didn’t respond to her screams or stick-shaking threats. She says at one point, it got within a foot. As seen in the video, she said the only thing that got it to back up were lunges.

Two men out on the water, fisherman Andrew DeCarton and captain William Kelley, heard the commotion and responded.

It was reported that several other boaters passed by but mistook her stick for a fishing pole and the coyote for her dog.

The footage above was recorded by DeCarton.

Excess noise from the two men caused the animal to flee.

“I told Andrew, ‘We need to get her on the boat,’” Kelley said. “I pulled up close enough, started banging my oar on the side of the boat. That’s when he started to run away.”

Some of the coverage may have you thinking this was The Grey but that has to do with media, not Sterlis.