By Beth Velliquette
Chapel Hill Herald
CARRBORO, N.C. — A Carrboro police officer scared off a coyote that was chasing a man and his dogs on Old N.C. 86 early Tuesday morning.
Officer W. Horton wrote in a report that he was driving on Old N.C. 86 near the Hogan Farm when he saw what he thought was a stray dog standing in the grass next to the road looking at what he thought was a jogger and his dogs, but when he got closer he realized it wasn’t a dog at all.
It was a coyote, and it began to chase the man and his dogs, who ran away on a sidewalk near Farmhouse Drive.
“I turned around and headed toward the coyote and sounded my horn to scare it away,” Horton wrote in the report. “It got within 20 feet of the man before it ran into the cornfield across the road.
The officer spoke with the 49-year-old man who said that he had been walking his dogs when he saw the coyote run into the brush ahead of him, and then it popped back out and started to follow him and his dogs.
The man told the officer that he had seen coyotes in the area before but had never seen a coyote act in that manner before.
The officer notified Animal Control and Wildlife officers.
Copyright 2012 The Durham Herald Co.