Coyotes
I am hiking at sunset and spot four coyotes at the edge of town picking their way between boulders and scrub brush. It does not matter which city I am near; the scene could be anywhere in the western United States. As darkness descends into dusk, the coyotes gather on the edges of the human population like urban commandos, getting ready to make raids upon the city.
One hears so much in the news about animals going extinct, being added to the endangered species list, and critical loss of habitat, but none of these things are happening to coyotes. Across the nation, coyote populations are increasing. Although there are specific losses of habitat as more and more of the west is plowed under to create more suburbia; coyote range is expanding greatly. Places like Maine, Alaska, and Florida which were never traditional coyote habitats now boast permanent resident populations. Even the citizens in the outliers of our nation’s capital have recently begun complaining for the first time about coyote predations upon pets and garbage. In fact, the densest coyote populations per square mile are not in the wilderness areas but on the edges of our cities, where the coyotes have access to the ample food supplies our human residences provide.
Dwight D. Eisenhower must be the patron saint of coyotes. His efforts to build this nation's interstate highways system was a key component of the spread of coyotes. It is not that coyotes ever learned to drive or even hitchhike, but the vast network of roads proved beneficial to two species in particular: coyotes and ravens. Before the interstates were built, coyotes were common in the west and especially the southwest, but numbers diminished quickly elsewhere across the continent. In those days ravens appeared in the southwest but were relatively rare. One of the unexpected consequences of the highway system was roadkill. Ravens were able to bully the vultures for these asphalt carcasses and their numbers spread prolifically until they were a common sight across the southwest. Coyotes too, are suspected of using the roadways as tools to migrate all over the United States.
Cities and small towns all over the southwestern US are crisscrossed by arroyos and sandy washes. These arroyos frequently go unnoticed by the human population unless there are monsoon floods but to the coyotes, they represent a vast network of puppy pirate highways; giving them access even to the most urban parts of the cities. Alone or in small informal packs, the coyotes will prowl deep into the heart of the urban wilderness, eating trash and hunting unprotected pets. One of the favorite forms of mischief these renegade canines like to engage in is breaking into zoos. Across the nation, zoos have been penetrated by coyotes again and again. Once they get inside the zoo, coyotes follow certain distinct behavioral patterns. The coyotes will enter the zoo every single night until the zookeepers repair the breach in security. The coyotes always eat the birds. Dining on these exotic birds with bright colored plumages must be the coyote equivalent of five-star gourmet dining.
I remember during my journeys through Alaska, stopping for gas at the Tok Junction Cutoff. Rummaging through the garbage was a coyote. During my long drive from Arizona to Alaska the landscape changed dramatically. The animals changed as well; moose and caribou replaced deer and antelope. Javelinas were nowhere to be found. Instead of golden eagles, bald eagles ruled the skies. Grizzly and polar bears had replaced black bears. All the animals in Alaska were so different from the creatures I was used to seeing back home. Except for the coyote, who was a dead ringer for the happy panting canines I see in the desert. I was incredibly impressed with the ability of these canines to survive and adapt.
Among the native peoples of the southwest, Coyote is an important mythical figure, the cultural trickster. This mischievous hero is credited with many accidental discoveries, including creating the stars by spilling a sack of cornmeal across the heavens. In another story, Coyote creates the earth by pouring sand on to the primeval waters. In other tales he steals fire, releases impounded game animals, creates light, and is responsible for the origin of language when he steals the bag of words from Old Man Moon. The Chinook tell a legend which resembles the Greek myth of Orpheus where Eagle and Coyote visit the Land of the Dead to retrieve their wives but Coyote’s eternal curiosity fouls things up.
The secret name of trickster coyote among the Tohonno O’odham is Ban and his name is not invoked lightly. In most cultures of the southwest, coyote stories are reserved for the winter when only immediate family are in the audience. There is a saying, “In the summer — even the corn has ears.” One must wonder what it says about the modern ecological balance we have created when the one species that has benefited the most from our urban and suburban sprawl is the mischievous trickster.
One pack of urban coyotes has been tracked and studied, living in downtown Phoenix since the 1930s. This family of coyotes has not seen desert or wilderness in several generations.
It has become common for newly transplanted city folks, Midwesterners, and easterners, and Californians, to move out to new communities which have been recently created by scraping the desert flat to complain about the trespassing canine pirates. They demand that Game and Fish, state and city government, or even federal officials eradicate the coyote problem. I have bad news for these people, the coyote problem has existed ever since we have “Gone West young man!”
Quite a few years ago I had an old cowboy joke printed in a western magazine. I was quite sure it was an old cowboy joke because it had been told to me by an old cowboy. What I did not realize was how far back the story went. After it was published the editor began to receive letters from his readers who recounted hearing the story many decades previously. One letter writer claimed that the story went back at least as far as 1908. The joke went something like this.
A bunch of sheepherders were having a 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 2 to 9 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 really quick or the ones that survive breed like rabbits.
Therefore, the university intellectual egghead bureaucrat 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 be blaced with birth control. This would not result in an immediate decline in the coyote population but eventually it would put a stop to the sheepherders’ problems.
To drive home his point, the university intellectual egghead bureaucrat 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 of each one describing what they meant. 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 in relationship with 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.”
Like I said, that story goes back at least as far as 1908 and just goes to show that coyotes will continue to be with us for an awfully long time and maybe even thrive. While we humans are left to ponder a modern ecological balance where many species go extinct or are endangered but the mischievous trickster flourishes.
