Rasham Riely-Gibbons was standing in her yard, closing the door to her henhouse, when it happened.

She had five minutes left in her morning routine when she heard Bart’s tiny scream; she was 15 feet away when they took him.

Barefoot, she sprinted through her four-acre clearing, the silent bandits already well into the bordering wetland, with her two Great Pyrenees trailing.

The rescue was not easy. She crawled with Trent, her husband, through dense brush, her unprotected hands and knees bleeding as she fended off thistle and blackberry vines. After half a mile, the path became impassable, and they were forced to start again, but the second slog was no more successful.

Surrounded by forest growth, they could not see, and Odin and Solace were now too far away to guide them with their barking.

An hour had passed and Bart — the family’s beloved puppy — still was missing.

Devastated, Rasham and Trent doubled back to the farm, and jumped in the car to round up the Pyrenees. But as they turned onto Sands Avenue, a neighbor’s grandson flagged them down; he had found Bart’s body.

“I don’t care that he’s dead, just, please, take me to him,” Rasham remembered crying.

Bart’s stomach was bloody and there was a puncture wound behind his hind leg; Rasham surmised that the coyote had gripped him in his jaw, and that the momentum, from being carried, is what caused his little neck to break.

“I never thought that this was a possibility; never did it even cross my mind that it would be a possibility,” Rasham said later.

A five-month-old Shih-poo, Bart was 5½ pounds, a present from Rasham’s grandmother. He had a buddy, Maggie, even smaller than he was. They’d both shadow Rasham in the yard as she pulled grain and did other chores around the farm. She kept a close watch on them, but never expected they would be in danger while she was outside.

“I’ve been warned of eagles and hawks, and I’m familiar with those predator behaviors… but not once did anyone come up to me and say, ‘Be careful for those little dogs because a coyote will walk up and take it,’” Rasham explained.

A neighbor has counted up to 15 coyotes traveling in packs along the New Brooklyn Road-Sands Avenue corner, and while Rasham and her husband have sustained attacks on free-range chickens and a 40-pound goat, the incidents had always taken place when the farm owners were out, and had decreased in recent months, so they didn’t worry about their small pets.

But after what happened to Bart last week, they’re taking extreme precautions. Rasham’s relegated Maggie to a leash.

“I put a jacket on her; it prohibits her from sneaking through the fencing and getting out,” she said.

Bart is not the first dog to be snatched by coyotes while his owner was watching. Rasham was horrified to receive a multitude of messages from other islanders, sharing one tragic tale after another.

Lisa Hackett’s Papillon, Izzy, was killed two autumns ago, seized from her Beach Cress residence when her son turned to grab his phone from the basement. He heard Izzy’s yelp, and chased and screamed at the coyote, hoping he would drop the dog to safety – but Izzy was lost.

Maurine Stich reported her dog, Chester, was taken in a similar way. And countless others weighed in, maintaining that something must be done; these island coyotes are becoming too bold, too menacing, too aggressive.

But according to Lisa Horn, the executive director of West Sound Wildlife Shelter, this behavior is not unusual for coyotes.

“Yes, it’s daring, but the coyote that did this is just looking for food, not doing it out of an aggressive stance,” she said.

Washington’s Department of Fish & Wildlife elaborates: Coyotes are opportunists. As the weather turns colder, ordinary prey — rats, rabbits, small deer — become scarce. Famished, the coyotes eat whatever they find.

“We’re seeing them more in our yards and we’re seeing them in our streets because we’re living in their territory,” Horn said. “It speaks to development, that we’re building more and more, encroaching on their natural habitat.”

Despite her grief, Rasham agreed that the coyotes are not at fault for Bart’s death. Since the incident, she’s pored over research about coyote activity in urban settings, and she’s convinced that it’s our responsibility to alleviate the conflicts.

“I have a pretty healthy attitude when it comes to the nature of life. Animals come and go in this world, and Bart’s life was short and that is that, but I do think that the coyotes deserve as much a right to be here as we do.

“Do I think that there’s a pretty obvious imbalance in numbers of population of coyote and prey?” she asked. “Absolutely. Do I think development is responsible? Absolutely. I think the trees that were lost to make way for [Walgreens] and the development along the highway, and I think the six developments going on right now in Winslow, in the south end, the north end — these are the consequences. I mean, it’s really easy to clear a forest and put up a house and ignore the aftermath, or the potential consequences for such actions. But we are living them — the people that have lost dogs and lost cats are living the consequences.”

Rasham hopes that islanders will learn from her experience and leash their small pets.

On a larger scale, she hopes that Bart’s story will help to generate discussion about how the coyote population can be managed. She has her own ideas about how that can be done.

“I think that better protocol for development is essential,” she said. “Maintaining preservations and wildlife corridors where these coyotes can exist and calling for management of these corridors such that there is an abundance of their natural food source left behind, so they’re not coming onto these properties and eating people’s pets, or their children.

“You know, this is not about war,” she continued. “It’s not about fighting; it’s not about retaliation. It’s about management.”