Odds are a hawk won’t steal your pet, but you should still be cautious

A hawk hunting for house pets in the kempt lawns of suburbia sounds like the making of an urban legend, but the tale has, in recent decades, become a staple of local news. In 2011 a hawk plucked two small dogs from their Boston neighborhood and dropped them from the sky, inflicting serious injuries. A different hawk nabbed a Pomeranian from its home in Beech Island, South Carolina back in 2013; the 10-year-old rescue didn’t survive. And then there’s the case of the great horned owl, that in 1995, reportedly feasted on the pets of Greenville, Maine.

Evening news packages follow predictable beats: a red-eyed middle-aged man or woman, the still photograph of their diminutive family pet, and a cool baritone voiceover: "A large hawk had a...