Although Ethan Jett’s eight-foot-tall wooden privacy fence protects his yard from coyotes, his neighbors have not been so fortunate.

“I know they’re [coyotes] around here,” Jett said. “My neighbors have posted on Nextdoor about either seeing them or finding a torn-up deer carcass in their front yard. We live in Wine Ridge, right next to the Heatherwood Golf Course, so we have tons and tons of deer. My next-door neighbor has a chain link fence, so he says he sees them often walking behind his house, but we have an eight-foot wooden privacy fence so I’ve never seen them.”

It is clear that Jett’s neighborhood is not the only one with a coyote problem, as social media demonstrates. While people have been posting footage of their furry late-night visitors more frequently in recent months, longtime resident Don Cosper said the animals are nothing new to his area of English Village.

“We’ve had coyotes on and off for the 40 years I’ve lived in this neighborhood,” he said. “They were here before it was developed 100 years ago.”

Although they don’t have an exact count, Marianne Gauldin of the Alabama Department of Conservation & Natural Resources said coyote numbers in Jefferson County have remained “stable” in recent years.