Coyotes are not normally known for their love of cheese.
But one wild animal caused chaos at an Aldi supermarket in Chicago’s Northwest Side on Monday morning.
A video shared on social media showed an Animal Care and Control officer and a cop confronted the coyote as curious customers gathered and observed. One of them used the back side of a floor sweeper to poke at the animal, before eventually dragging it out by its tail.
The coyote quickly dashed back into the cooler, and spectators could be heard gasping.
‘I was prepared to see him pull out a opossum or a raccoon,’ wrote an X (formerly Twitter) user who shared the clop. ‘Did NOT expect that.’
Officials eventually captured the coyote and representatives from the Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation picked it up around 7pm for evaluation. It did not appear to have any injuries from the scuffle. The coyote will possibly be brought back to the wild if fit.
No humans were hurt.
A witness at the store at 800 North Kedzie in Humboldt Park told WLS that the coyote was roaming the car park just minutes prior to entering the market.
One expert, the Cook County Coyote Project’s Stand Gehrt, said the animal ‘picked an odd location’ to hide.
‘They do this sometimes. They make a mistake. They’re trying to avoid us. They’re trying to hide from us,’ Gehrt told WLS.
‘Probably trying to find a new area to hide ended up inside the store, and this has happened in the past.’
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Coyote sightings in the area increase from January to March due to their mating season.
‘Some of these animals, the ones especially that make a mistake, and they find themselves into a building, often are what we call transient animals, so these are animals that actually don’t have a mate yet,’ Gehrt said.
Another expert, Liza Lehrer who is assistant director of the Urban Wildlife Institute at Lincoln Park Zoo, said it was not completely surprising that the coyote entered the supermarket chain during a colder time of the year.
‘That’s kind of the time where a lot of different wildlife might be a little bit more active – during the daytime, unexpectedly,’ Lehrer told CBS News.
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