Coyotes have been spotted in Downers Grove, but police say nothing can be done about it.

“I’m afraid of them for the first time in 65 years of me living here,” Mae C. Marvin, 96, said. “I have never been afraid before.”

Marvin lives in the 1900 block of Elmore Avenue and said neighbors have told her of the coyotes for the last four or five months.

Her first sighting did not happen until Sept. 10. Marvin’s caretaker told her to look across the street while they were outside her home.

“I glued my eyes over to something, and it was an animal,” she said.

Marvin said the incident occurred at about 3 p.m. that day. A school bus had just left the area, which has her concerned.

“These animals are not slow, and they could easily grab one of these children and I don’t want that to happen,” Marvin said.

She also had seen the animal outside of her kitchen window in her backyard Sept. 13.
Marvin had called police two weeks before her sighting, after hearing about the coyotes from a neighbor. She was told there was nothing they could do.

“It’s not necessarily a police matter,” said Downers Grove police Sgt. David Bormann. “If it was threatening someone, we’d come out, but I haven’t heard anything about attacks.”

Police advise people to stay away from the animals, Bormann said.

“They’re a wild animal, and they have a right to be in this area,” Bormann said.

Village spokesman Doug Kozlowski said residents should call the village if coyotes are spotted.

“We’re tracking the sightings, keeping track of when they are seen and how many are seen,” Kozlowski said.

Kozlowski said there’s never been an incident where a coyote has injured people or domestic animals. If the problem does grow, Kozlowski said the village would call on the appropriate people to trap the animals.

For now, it is just a matter of tracking.

“They’re a protected species so there’s nothing we can do to control and eradicate the problem,” Kozlowski said.