In just the last month, coyotes have shown up on the streets of Detroit, in a sandwich shop in downtown Chicago and at a mattress store in Kansas City, Mo. A 5-year-old boy in Middletown, N.J., about 40 miles from New York City, was bitten by one last week and needed 46 stitches to the head.

The remarkably adaptive animals, famous for roaming rural stretches, have long been spotted in cities and suburban areas, but some naturalists suspect the ranks of urban coyotes may be swelling as they migrate from the open spaces of the West toward the East and the Midwest.

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18911309/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)