May 15--A Barrington wildlife shelter is raising four newborn coyote pups after they were discovered by a family that heard them crying underneath their deck and pulled up the floor boards.
"They raised the deck board and found five puppies. One of them was dead and the other four were covered in mud and hypothermic," said Dawn Keller, founder and director of Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation.
The family in Libertyville took the surviving pups in for the night, kept them warm and called the shelter the next day. Keller said they appeared to be three or four days old.
Staff at the shelter have been feeding the pups every two to three hours, Keller said. When they are weened, they will be placed with a female coyote at the shelter.
"She'll help teach them to hunt," she said. "And she'll teach them to stay wild."
When they can live on their own, they will be released, Keller said.
She said the shelter has cared for other coyotes and them let them go successfully. "They run and never look back."
