city en Tracking city-dwelling coyotes at night <p>Coyotes have been making themselves at home in cities all over the country.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; They&rsquo;ve been showing up in big cities like Chicago and Detroit, and in a lot of suburban areas.&nbsp;</p><p>But we don&rsquo;t know a whole lot about Michigan&rsquo;s urban coyotes.</p><p>A small <a href="">research team</a> from Wayne State University is trying to find out as much as they can.</p><p>But to do this... they have to act like urban coyotes... and become nocturnal.&nbsp; Bill Dodge is a PhD candidate at Wayne State.&nbsp; He heads up the research team.&nbsp;</p><p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve found in other studies that coyotes especially around humans become much more nocturnal than say, out West.&rdquo;</p><p>Dodge invited me to tag along on their 6pm to midnight shift one Friday night a few weeks ago.&nbsp;</p><p>I met up with the group in a parking lot in northeast Oakland County.&nbsp;</p><p>Bill Dodge puts on a headset and pulls an antenna and a mess of cables out of his trunk.</p><p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting a signal on him but it&rsquo;s really weak...&rdquo;</p><p>They&rsquo;re tracking a radio collared coyote that they trapped last summer.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p><p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll go down the road a ways and take a listen to see if he&rsquo;s closer.&rdquo;</p><p>The team takes precautions to keep from being spotted by other people... as they cruise around these neighborhoods.</p><p>Holly Hadac volunteers with the coyote study.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s also a retired sheriff&rsquo;s deputy.&nbsp; She points out the red cellophane covering her car&rsquo;s interior lights.</p><p>&ldquo;My interior lights don&rsquo;t go on when I start the car up.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve got all the lights in my car blocked out, and that way keeps me incognito with what I&rsquo;m doing.&nbsp; So we keep our coyote safe so nobody knows where he is.&rdquo;</p><p>&ldquo;If someone doesn&rsquo;t like coyotes, they might look for him.&rdquo;</p><p>She says they&rsquo;re worried someone might kill their research subject.</p><p> Tue, 03 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000 Rebecca Williams 6884 at Tracking city-dwelling coyotes at night Flint police department will close on weekends <p>The Flint Police Department is closed on the weekends following the latest round of officer layoffs.</p><p><a href="">The Flint Journal reports</a> new office hours took effect Saturday, the day after 20 police officers were laid off.</p><p>Flint Mayor Dayne Walling laid off a total of 66 police officers this year to cope with a multi-million-dollar deficit. The city also made other cuts. Sun, 19 Dec 2010 20:20:27 +0000 Kyle Norris 645 at Flint police department will close on weekends Flint to demolish more houses to fight blight <p>More houses are coming down in Flint. <span>Kristin Longley reports in the <a href="">Flint Journal</a> that 174 houses will come down by December 31st. That&#39;s on top of the 125 houses city crews are expected to take down by the end of the year.</span></p><p><span>Flint union leader Sam Muma says city crews can&#39;t take down all the homes scheduled for demolition:</span></p> Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:49:28 +0000 Mark Brush 126 at Flint to demolish more houses to fight blight