To the editor:
I read an article in The Boston Herald entitled “Coyote Sightings Howling.” Informative and interesting. It came out two days ago. We actually get The Herald and The Boston Globe up here in Wolfeboro, N.H. Thank God for horse sleighs.
In the 1990’s, I rode horses in Lynn Woods for three years. Occasionally sighting Eastern Coyotes. Living in Nahant, five months of the year, riding in Lynn was, was close and convenient. Oftentimes, I spent a month in the Baltimore/DC area going to classes for the Merchant Marine. The other six months, I worked on ships. Now, I am retired (72-years-old) and live in Wolfeboro. I have coyotes on my property in Wolfeboro and New Durham. When I lived in Nahant, we had them there. I left Nahant in 2014. I lived in Nahant for 30 years, and prior to that in the center of Lynn for 30 years.
As the leash laws evolved, in the late 60’s and early 70’s, raccoons, rabbits, skunks, and opossums found new homes. Urban and suburban areas. Anywhere there were two acres or more, these quadrupeds moved in. We had “defunded” the police. Dogs that had roamed the urban and suburban areas had been fenced in and tied on chains and ropes. Now foxes appeared in towns like Nahant, and not only did they eat the quadrupeds, they ate Mrs. O’Leary’s cats. As time went on in Nahant, coyotes appeared and ate the foxes. The coyotes have also attacked dogs, frightened people walking dogs, and even chased 2 deer off of Forty Steps, and led them to their death. Once again, man has done damage to the ecosystem, this time putting neighborhood dogs on unemployment, leaving them to leashed walks and dog parks with God knows what conditions.
Another problem is that as we go up the food chain, tick-ridden deer are getting hit by cars in our cities. Roaming dogs would prevent this.
We can’t go back to the 1950’s. Fonzie is 82 now. Unleashing dogs that are not Street Smart would get them killed, instead of Bambi. In the early 1970’s, we had a pack of dogs that just hung around our neighborhood. 6-7 large shepherds and whatever crosses. This was in the Highlands. We had no rodent, quadruped, or deer problem then. Occasionally, we had a mailman with dog bites in his pants, but we were safer, all in all.
I have articles with Fox, CNN, on the “Dali,” hitting the Francis Scott Key Bridge, two years ago. I did a lecture/talk on this with GE Lynn Engineers last year. In 2016, I did articles with Michael Sallah, then with USA Today, and I was interviewed by the Portland Press, AP, and others on the 2016 sinking of the “El Faro,” a ship headed for San Juan, leaving from Jacksonville. The Lawrence-Haverhill Tribune did an article on my adventures called “Lost and Found.” I brought two abandoned American boys, left in the Dominican Republic, with no means, only a selfish family. A similar article was written by The Daily Item.
Forty years at sea. Forty countries, Forty-one states. 24 times in the Panama Canal. Suez twice. And many times through the locks onto the Charles River in Cambridge/Boston.
Respectfully submitted,
Captain F. John Nicoll
Wolfeboro N.H.
