Coyote Drags Toddler From Front Yard

A coyote grabbed a 2-year-old girl by the head and tried to drag her from the front yard of her mountain home in the third incident of a coyote threatening a small child in Southern California in five days, authorities said.

The coyote attacked the girl around noon Tuesday when her mother, Melissa Rowley, went inside the home for a moment to put away a camera, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said in an incident report.

Rowley came out of the house and saw the coyote dragging her daughter toward a street. She ran toward her daughter, and the animal released the girl and ran away, said sheriff's spokeswoman Arden Wiltshire.

Rowley took her daughter to a hospital where the toddler was treated for several punctures to the head and neck area, and a laceration on her mouth.

She was then flown to Loma Linda University Hospital for further treatment. Her injuries were not life-threatening. She was released from the hospital Wednesday afternoon and was expected to fully recover.

State Fish and Game wardens and county animal control authorities set traps for the coyote and were monitoring the neighborhood high in the San Bernardino Mountains about 65 miles miles northeast of Los Angeles.

On Friday, a nanny pulled a 2-year-old girl from the jaws of a coyote at Alterra Park in Chino Hills, a San Bernardino County community about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. The girl suffered puncture wounds to her buttocks and was treated at a hospital.

A coyote came after another toddler in the same park Sunday. The child's father kicked and chased the coyote away.

That incident prompted Fish and Game officials to temporarily close the park, which is near Chino Hills State Park, a natural open space of thousands of acres spanning nearly 31 miles.

Across the country coyotes are moving into cities and suburbs showing up in unusual places - like the one that wandered into a Chicago sandwich shop last year, reports CBS News correspondent John Blackstone.

Blackstone reports that the advice for people who encounter coyotes in the city or anywhere else is to make plenty of noise - that should scare them away.