A Coyote Primer

We were in South Lake Tahoe a few months ago and one sunny midmorning I looked up and saw a pair of coyotes casually walking down the middle of a residential street. They were a handsome pair, beautifully marked and from all appearances, well fed. They passed at a distance of 25 ft and one of them made solid eye contact with me. There was a penetrating wildness in those yellow eyes and no hint of fear or concern. Instead, I saw a calm confidence worn by an animal on his beat, not looking to cause problems, just securing the borders and ensuring all was copasetic. The coyotes weren’t in my territory. I was in theirs. It reminded me of a photo I once saw of several deer standing on a roadway in a woodland with a caption that read, “There are no deer on the road. There is a road in the forest.” 

From the time of the first European settlers we have held a sanctimonious obligation to rid the land of wild things that we deem threatening or competitive. Predators have always topped the list and the claims against them are often exaggerated, but it is nonetheless widely held that eagles take lambs, hawks and foxes take chickens, bears and wolves and lions take cattle, and coyotes take almost anything. Through the ages we have launched organized attacks against them using poisons, traps, bounties, and guns. And as many top predators were extirpated or nearly so, the coyote has not only prevailed, but thrived. Their response to control efforts was simply to have larger litters. 

A few years ago, my brother, who still lives in our hometown, called to say he’d been seeing red foxes walking the sidewalks and hearing them scream at night. He suspected a den near a creek that drifted through the heart of town. I found the report incredible until I learned that coyotes were moving into red fox rural territories and displacing them, forcing ole Reynard to find new accommodations in suburbs or even the hearts of cities. 

Perhaps no other predator has proven itself more resilient to persecution or more adaptable to ever changing habitats than coyotes. Their diets are highly opportunistic, shifting on a whim to whatever is most available and most easily obtained. Fresh meat is fine, insects are fine, as are frogs, lizards, fish, fruit, or roadkill. The number of coyotes that cause legitimate problems with domestic livestock are few, and in instances where control measures are justified, not all have to be lethal. In one study, a farmer suspecting that coyotes were killing livestock found a solution in feeding the canids scraps collected from a local butcher. Coyotes kill to eat, but only when it’s the easiest way to eat. 

The first time I heard a coyote yipping and howling was on a college field trip out west in the mid 70’s. I knew then they were expanding their range, adapting to new habitats, even drinking out of swimming pools in high rent districts of Southern California. And though their occupied areas and populations were predicted to grow, I was yet surprised when we began hearing and seeing them regularly in Indiana. They had been here a while but in low numbers, particularly in the northern half of the state, so to me they seemed out of place. They are native to the western two thirds of the US and historically associated with lands carved with dry gulches, graced with wind sheared rock, speckled with cacti— out west, where the deer and the antelope play. 

But coyotes were not to be restricted, and since the 1950’s have expanded their range by 40 percent and now occupy every state other than Hawaii. Here in the heartland it’s breeding season for canids, a time when males are preoccupied and may display behavior considered abnormal. But what is normal for a coyote? What living wild species has better demonstrated a capacity to push the boundaries of normality? 

What a wise and remarkably determined animal. A keystone predator well established in our midst, doing what keystone predators do best: maintaining balance and diversity in what remains of our wild landscapes. 

Oh give me a home where the coyotes roam 

Which is a home most anywhere today 

Because the coyote, it seems, has the wisdom and means 

To live wherever it may 

It would not be constrained to a western range 

Within borders defined on a map It would not be defeated, controlled or deleted 

By poisons or guns or traps 

So live on, wise canid, we’ll not take for granted 

The hinterland balance you bring 

And will share your delight when in stillness of night 

You raise your voice to sing.