The city is getting coyote ugly.
One of the wily predators — which have long kept to the city’s northern wooded areas — decided to take a walk on the wild West Side yesterday, leading cops on a hair-raising chase as far downtown as Chelsea.
Cops pulled out every stop to bag the cunning canine — which they were joking about nicknaming “Wile E.” — but it managed to slip from the NYPD’s grasp as if it were the Road Runner.
It was at large last night after last being sighted on West 57th Street.
The howling high jinks comes just a short time after three coyotes were sighted on the campus of Columbia University and another was seen in Central Park on Feb. 7.
But this coyote’s venture to Clubland is making some New Yorkers fear that we’re in the midst of a coyote invasion.
“Of course I’m scared of the coyote,” Derrick Moultrie, 41, who works at a park near where the animal was sighted yesterday. “If I see it, I’ll just freeze like you would with a dog.”
The coyote was first sighted at about 3:40 a.m. trotting along a bike path on the West Side Highway near West 35th Street, sources said.
Police went on the hunt and spotted the coyote on the grounds of Chelsea Piers at West 23rd Street.
Then they followed it onto a U-shaped walkway on a pier at West 24th Street — and thought they had it cornered.
Officers from the Emergency Service Unit, the 10th Precinct and the Manhattan South Task Force closed in around the dodgy doggy. It was running in circles on the landscaped pier, featuring a sign that said “dog-free lawn.”
First, the cops tried to rope it in with a noose on the end of a stick. But the coyote was too clever to get close enough to be snagged.
Then an officer loaded up a tranquilizer dart and walked down the pier toward the coyote. The animal somehow scurried out of the trap and headed back uptown.
It was last seen along the West Side Highway at West 57th Street.
The pup’s plight had some New Yorkers pulling for him yesterday.
“I feel really bad for the coyote,” said Chelsea resident Kim Bambino. “He’s on the West Side Highway and he doesn’t know how to dodge cars.”
Esther Hatch, also of Chelsea, said she feared for her dog.
“We have a place in Connecticut and I don’t let him go out after dusk up there” because of the coyotes, she said. “I worry about it up there, but I never thought I’d have to worry about it here.”
Coyotes can get into the city over bridges, and can find places to live in parks and open spaces like college campuses.
Residents have been warned to stay away if they see the coyote.