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Coyotes
Last updated on Wednesday, January 01, 2003
We were standing on our back patio - my husband, Richard, my daughter, Molly, and I - talking and watching the afterglow of a winter sunset when I heard a distant sound. "Shh!" I said. We stood still, shivering in the frosty air. It sounded again, a chorus of drawn-out, howling canine voices. "Coyotes?" guessed Molly. I nodded my head: "Domestic dogs can sing like that." "But here?" she asked doubtfully, waving her arm at the mix of suburbs and fields around our backyard.
Coyote Photo by Carla DeMarco. The last hundred-fifty years have been tough ones for many of the West's wild creatures: the flood tide of humans, with our appetite for space and resources, has pushed out many, from bison to tiny desert fish. We have been hardest on predators - bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars, eagles, hawks - branding them "dangerous," slaughtering them by the millions. Many have disappeared or retreated to protected places. But not wily coyotes - they thrive. And, as urban and city habitat spreads, coyotes are moving in next door, their lively voices echoing through town.
What gives coyotes their edge? Even their enemies admit that coyotes are smart and adaptable. And it may be because of their diet: Like us, coyotes are omnivorous, gourmands, not gourmets, eating everything from chiles to grains to red meat. John Alcock, an evolutionary biologist at Arizona State University, thinks that in order to answer essential questions - Is this food? How can I get it? - omnivores have evolved brains heavy on problem-solving circuitry: Over time, omnivores have chosen brains rather than brawn, flexibility over habitual behavior. Where an opportunity presents itself, omnivores figure out how to grab it. Thus, coyotes can live almost anywhere, from Los Angeles to the Maine woods or suburban Las Cruces.
Turns out that human-modified habitat is a positive coyote heaven: dumpsters, gardens, pet food, and small animals like mice, rats and stray pets provide abundant nourishment for these nocturnal hunters; water is plentiful; neglected nooks and crannies abound for denning spaces; and other large predators are scarce.
Ironically, it is coyotes' very ability to adapt to our habitat that sparks trouble. Opportunists always, coyotes hunt whatever is easiest to catch, oblivious of the distinction we make between domestic animals - chickens, or poodles, for instance - and "wild" animals like mice or cottontails. For their catholic tastes, we hate coyotes. But our pets are predators too: Studies show that house cats, healthy, well-fed, are now the principal killers of birds and small mammals in suburban America. Should we hate them for it? No, but we might keep them inside more to give our wild neighbors a break.
Coming to terms with wildness - in singing coyotes or our pet cats - and seeing ourselves again as part of nature, not something separate, may be our greatest challenge.
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