SPRINGDALE — Police will send sharpshooters out to the woods behind the Oxford Hills subdivision twice more this week, after bagging one coyote Monday night.

        “We don't want to send in people with weapons,” Police Capt. Bill Hafer said. But, “if we can drive them back into the woods or drive them away, that's what we want to accomplish. The city had determined that we are going to try a couple of more times and that's going to be it.”

        A pack of up to five coyotes leapt over a fence here last Thursday and killed a 10-pound poodle.

        Because coyotes are solitary mammals, city officials think the pack includes a mother teaching her pups to hunt before they separate this fall.

        City officials had intended to stop hunting for coyotes on Tuesday, until sharpshooters killed one Monday evening.

        Capt. Hafer didn't know whether it was the mother coyote or one of the pups, which are several months old.

        The success means that another shoot will take place Friday and on another undetermined day this week.

        After that, a professional trapper will walk through the woods monthly to determine whether the coyotes continue to call Springdale their home.

        John Ware, the trapper, is licensed through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), Capt. Hafer said.

        The city also plans to send out letters advising residents on how to live with nearby coyotes, which have been spotted in the woods behind the Oxford Hills and Springdale Lake subdivisions for several years and became especially noticeable in 2000.

        Health Commissioner David Winfough also intends to ask ODNR to host a seminar that further advises residents how to co-exist with the wild canines that live in Ohio's 88 counties.

        “Nobody's in favor of (shooting at them), because it's not an efficient way of taking care of the problem,” Capt. Hafer said.

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