On more than one occasion, Chicago-area police have pulled researcher Stan Gehrt out of the truck he drives around the area. Often, they are acting on tips from wary community members, who report his vehicle—topped by large radio telemetry antennae and driving through neighborhood streets in the wee hours of the morning—as suspicious. “We have to assume the position [hands up, legs apart] and the whole nine yards,” says the biologist, based at Ohio State University.
Indeed, when he’s used his telemetry antennae to track coyote packs through rough neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago, Gehrt says that he often blows through red lights, because stopping at lights during the early morning hours when there are no cars on the road and his quarry is most active would be, well, foolish. Such is the life of an urban biologist.
“Rural biologists don’t have to deal with that,” Gehrt says.
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