Coyote Birth Control

This is an old story I sold many times many years ago, including to the joke page of Arizona Highways but it is not my story, this is an old cowboy joke. Exactly how old no one is certain but when I sold it to one western magazine somebody sent in a letter to the editor saying that they had heard the story in Wyoming in 1929. I hope you like it.

Once upon a time there was a parcel out west filled with a bunch of sheepherders that was having a terrible coyote predation problem. As the numbers of their flock dwindled the sheepherders went to the government requesting a solution to their problem. The government responded by sending out a university intellectual egghead bureaucrat kind of guy. The egghead called a town meeting and invited all the sheepherders to attend. The problem, he said, is that coyotes are sensitive breeders. The number of pups in a coyote litter can vary anywhere from two to fourteen coyotes; depending on the circumstances. Therefore it is almost impossible to eradicate the coyote population by hunting them. They just make more coyotes in a hurry. We can try leaving poisoned meat out but either the coyotes figure it out real quick or the ones that survive breed like rabbits.

Therefore, the university intellectual egghead bureacrat kind of guy presented a new sort of plan. To control the coyote population they would still put out baited meat but instead of poison the meat would laced with birth control. This would not result in an immediate decline in the coyote population but in the long run it would put a stop to the sheepherders problems.

To drive home his point, the university intellectual egghead bureacrat lectured on and on with lots of research cleverly displayed with charts and graphs filled with circles and arrows and little paragraphs on the back describing each one. While the dumbfounded sheepherders looked on, the egghead bureaucrat began to talk about coyote fertility by age, coyote love urges by elevation, coyote sex drive according to season, coyote romantic interest conveyed by the phases of the moon, coyote horniness by time of day…

At last one of the frustrated sheepherders raised his hand and interrupted the longwinded lecture.

“Excuse me sir,” the sheepherder said, “All this talk about coyote romance is fine but when those coyotes catch our sheep all they want to do is eat them.”