The Dog Lady

The Capitol View Manor neighborhood is currently experiencing an infestation more familiar to our friends in the suburbs. The city has closed Emma Millican Park after a small den of coyotes was discovered. Coyotes, which were historically native to the Great Plains before spreading to most of North America, are very elusive creatures, and rarely attack humans. Nonetheless, precaution is crucial when dealing with wild canines, and the city has demonstrated no less than the requisite degree of precaution in this instance.

It turns out, however, that the den is on private property adjacent to the park that is owned by Ami Ciontos, in whose yard leg traps were set against her wishes. The city has thus fired the trapper hired for the mission and is seeking a replacement. Ami is quite the advocate for dogs, particularly pitbulls; she is founder and president of the Atlanta Underdog Initiative, and has worked for many other such organizations. Moreover, she has appeared on Fox5 not once, or twice, but thrice to advocate for pitbull owners and breeders.

I'm no hater of dogs, myself, or even coyotes, despite being more of a cat person. A coyote ate one of my family's two cats three months ago, whom (or which, if you prefer) I had watched grow from the frail runt of the litter into a healthy but decidedly cuckoo eleven-year-old adult. Though I still miss Georgie, I take comfort in knowing she was food for a wild animal whose only prerogative was survival, rather than just roadkill. Imagine how dumb it would be for me to be mad at a coyote. They can't reason, at least not nearly as well as they can hunt.

More succinctly, coyotes are not at fault for Millican Park's closing; humans are. At the expense of the neighborhood's largest park, a place for children to play and for all residents to get to know the outdoors in Georgia's most populous city, Mrs. Ciontos has inflexibly prohibited the "just cruel" trapping of non-native fauna on her property. The city is currently exploring which action, if any, can be taken against the Ciontos household, and because the couple have placed their inordinate love of dogs above the needs of their neighborhood, I encourage the city in their fight.