The Illinois man rescued the lonely pup and brought her in a box to the local police believing it was a lost pet.
Sergeant Kyle Rybaski said: “He said he was driving by and saw the dog on the side of the road all alone.”
“He picked it up and brought it in so we would take it to an animal shelter,” he told The Dodo.
However, the police soon discovered that the cute baby didn’t look particularly dog-like and wasn’t similar to any puppy they had seen before.
“We soon realized that it wasn’t the average puppy. When I picked her up, her fur had a different feel to it. It was wiry,” said Rybaski.
“Her paws were a bit bigger than the average dog, too. Her sharp nails also drew our attention.”
Following a hunch, Rybaski looked up what baby cayotes looked like on the internet.
“We found it looked just like a coyote,” he said.
It was certainly a new experience for the police. “We were very excited. It’s not every day that you get to hold a coyote in your hands. Everybody was like, ‘Aww!’”
The baby cayote seemed to have got lost from its mother but was too young to be released back to the wild.
The police contacted a local wildlife center who agreed to take in the cute canine for now.
At the sanctuary, the pup will be with other cayotes and be taught all she needs to know to hopefully be released back into the wild one day.
“It was very rewarding, and it’s good to know that she’ll be taken care of,” Rybaski said. “It was a really neat experience.”
