When Lindsey Wood saw a shivering coyote perched on a log in Lake Erie off of Fuhrmann Boulevard on Friday, she decided she had to try to grab the animal.
The animal had other ideas. It jumped off the log it was perched on into the cold water.
“Thankfully, she realized as soon as she did that was a horrible decision and she turned immediately around, tried to crawl back on the log again, and that’s when I snared her,” said Wood, the Erie County SPCA’s chief investigations officer.
The dramatic rescue made for an unusual start to the holiday weekend for a team of SPCA officers.
The female coyote had been in the water for at least three hours already, Wood said. The animal was “violently shivering and was so exhausted from swimming when first seen that she couldn’t lift her head,” the SPCA said in a news release.
The water temperature for Lake Erie was around 43 degrees Friday, according to the National Weather Service.
Wood and her team were called by the state Department of Environmental Conservation to rescue the animal after Coast Guard officers spotted the her in the water.
Wood said it is likely that the coyote fell in to the lake while chasing something, and then swam to the dock at the Coast Guard Station on Fuhrmann Boulevard, which is directly across from the Erie Basin Marina. The large log was tied up to the dock, and the coyote was able to climb on top of it to stay out of the water.
Wood arrived at the waterfront with fellow officer Melina Homsi and SPCA agents Molly McLaughlin and Meghan Giles. It took all four of them to rescue the animal, Wood…
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