Coyote pup curls up in woman’s bed as presence increases across Toronto

Every Tuesday evening, Alice Kent leaves the back door of her Christie Pits home open for her cleaner.

But one day, after chatting and welcoming the cleaner into her house, Kent realized that the open door also let in an unexpected furry friend.

“She goes upstairs to start on her cleaning and she very calmly comes back down half of the stairs and says to me, ‘I think there’s a fox in your bedroom,'” said Kent. 

The “fox” was actually a baby coyote she said was laying on the mattress of the house’s master bedroom.

“I thought maybe she was playing a prank or she left a stuffed animal out for me or something,” said Kent. “I went up and expecting to see something cute … I looked into my room and there was a coyote on my bed.”

In recent years, Toronto has experienced a spike in encounters between people and coyotes. Since 2020, there have been nine incidents where people in Toronto have been bitten by coyotes, according to statistics provided by city staff. In February 2025, Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik put forward an urgent action plan.

This June, a child was attacked and taken to hospital in Whitby, Ont., followed by a two-year-old in July, also in Whitby. The recent encounters have sparked public outcry and led to a debate about population control.

For Kent, while she originally thought the pup was cute, after the reality of the situation set in, those feelings shifted.

“It was immediately just a lot of thoughts and feelings about danger for my kids or my cleaner or myself,” said Kent. “If it was cornered or if it was in a place that had no escape, it might get aggressive.”

Adding to the situation, the coyote pup had mange, a skin condition leading to scabs, itchy skin and missing patches of fur. 

Realizing the immediacy, Kent called both 911 and the Toronto Wildlife Center.

Catching and treating the baby coyote

Close coyote encounters like this are nothing new for the Christie Pits neighborhood.

“There is a lot of feeding still going on of coyotes in this area,” said Nathalie Karvonen, executive director of the Toronto Wildlife Center.

“That is a terrible thing to do for coyotes because it changes their behavior and it does make them less afraid of people and less afraid of houses,” she said.

When the police and wildlife response team arrived, Karvonen said the pup was found hiding under the bed.

All the team had to do was pull the pup out from under the bed.

“This family [of coyotes] is known to us because they are all sick with social sarcoptic mange and we have been trying to track them down,” said Karvonen.

After apprehending the pup from Kent’s home, Karvonen says her team did a quick check of the condition of the coyote and did a treatment at the location. They then released it into the area.”

Kent said that a few weeks before the incident, she had noticed three coyote pups often sitting on her back deck.

She said she would scare them away from her property — advice given by the Wildlife Center.

According to Karvonen, the best ways to deal with unwanted coyotes is to remove food sources like pet food, supervise cats or small dogs, and make loud noises.

“On the one hand we want to tell people if you’re scared of them this is what you can do. But then we also want to kind of reinforce that there isn’t really any reason to be afraid of them,” she said.

The Toronto Wildlife Centre only tracks coyotes that are reported as ‘sick’ in Toronto.

The question of exact numbers hangs in the air: when asked about how many coyotes she thinks are roaming the city, Karvonen said there would need to be a multi-million dollar study to get a true idea of the scale.