Some days, I feel like this too

A 54-foot yacht named Rockin Chair (how appropriate!) ran aground and tipped over just off Stanley Park earlier this week. It had 200 lbs of diesel fuel aboard, hence the yellow boom to contain leakage. As I cycled past on the first day of autumn, a small crowd was gathering to take pictures. Being a bit of a sheep, I stopped to take one too. And having done that, I felt compelled to post here so I could make some use of the photo.

Not much to the story, however, and no obvious way to flesh it out. Rockin Chair had “mechanical issues,” so the skipper ran aground to prevent it sinking, and it tipped over. It was surrounded by a boom. Two days later, I understand they righted it, and it likely sailed off again in search of other shores to wash up on. The CBC, Vancouver Sun, and Vancouver Is Awesome ran brief stories. Twitter granted it two tweets but the current top Google hits on that name are about a song. That’s all.

But maybe the captain ran aground because he caught sight of those missing coyotes running around the seawall? You know, the ones that have bitten 45 people since last December? They’ve culled (such a polite word for killed) 11 of them; 7 before and 4 after publicly announcing a cull of up to 35. Now they can’t find any more, and on Monday they declared an end to the cull. So either there really weren’t a lot of them in the park and those 11 coyotes were really, really busy (average of 4 bites apiece!), or word has gotten out there’s a bounty on their heads and they’ve all gone deep underground.

On Tuesday, they also arrested a couple of idiots feeding coyotes, an action believed to be the catalyst for the late lamented animals’ conversion to violence. Though wait a minute: if the trails reopened on Monday because officials couldn’t find any more coyotes, how could police have caught these two feeding them on Tuesday? According to Global News, “‘There are coyotes still in the park,’ … a very (limited) number, but the ones that are left … didn’t display the similar habits or challenges the other ones raised."

So the remaining coyotes are spared because they promised not to bite anyone? Or because killing coyotes really doesn’t make Vancouver look very good? Or maybe they just refused to eat the food offered? One hopes the idiots were caught before those polite coyotes showed up for lunch, not after, or we might still have something to worry about. But nice to know the coyote hunters have now left the park, even if we’re not sure whether there are still any coyotes out there.

I hear you, Rockin Chair. Some days I’d like to just run aground and tip over too.