Jacob the Coyote Spotted in N.Y. Park

(Associated Press) Weeks after Hal the coyote attracted national attention with his adventures in Central Park, another one of the animals was spotted in a Bronx park on Tuesday and was given a much more formal name: Jacob Van Cortlandt. The Department of Parks & Recreation said two golfers reported seeing the coyote at about 3 p.m. by hole No. 5 on Van Cortlandt Golf Course, a municipal course inside the park that stretches more than 1,100 acres at the northern end of the Bronx.

Mystech: Apparently Hal, from a few weeks ago, had a neighbor/friend. Let’s hope Jacob fares better.

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said Jacob the coyote was named after Jacobus Van Cortlandt, who served as mayor in the early 1700s and had a hand in the land transactions for the park.

Hal, the Central Park coyote, died late last month as he was being tagged for release upstate. He had been captured several days earlier after leading police on a wild chase through New York City’s largest park.

Hal was caught near 79th Street and Central Park West, shot by a police officer with a tranquilizer gun. The coyote, about a year old and weighing 35 pounds, could have crossed the Hudson River from New Jersey or wandered into the city from Westchester County, which borders Van Cortlandt Park.

Benepe said parks officials had confirmed the Jacob sighting on Tuesday but had no plans to pursue him because he posed no immediate danger to humans or small pets.

“Central Park is an area frequented by thousands of people on a daily basis,” Benepe said. “We’re not going to seek out this coyote — it’s not a cause for alarm unless we get reports of them frequenting heavily used areas.”