Wily wanderer merits wariness and respect
A young coyote glides through the wild grasses of Round Valley Regional Preserve.
A northwest breeze had come up and ten thousand brittle buckeye leaves were hissing in reply. Dominating the southern sky was the Mt. Diablo Summit, 3 miles ahead and 3,849 feet up. It was late afternoon and the blue oaks of Donner Canyon were already casting long shadows in the low summer sun.
I was skirting Donner Creek’s southerly meander when I heard voices. Ahead, maybe a quarter mile, rose a garble of high-pitched shrieks like the scattering of a flock of jays. But those weren’t birds; they were mammals. But what mammals? Out here I’d never heard anything resembling that pitch and timbre. For all I knew, I had teleported to some jungle a hemisphere away and eavesdropped on a pack of baboons being ambushed by a leopard. I picked up the pace.
A couple minutes of light trot later, I saw them: a man and two women equipped with backpacks and walking sticks, staring at the dry creek bed. There, 30 yards down the slope, scampering among the rocks and bramble, were two girls – between 8 and 10, I guessed – innocently goofing around.
A coyote pup, separated from his mother, takes a furtive drink from Marsh Creek.
I reached the adults and decided to speak up. “I hate to interfere –” and the man started chuckling; he had no idea how I was about to finish my thought “– but your girls have alerted every coyote within 2 miles to the chance for an afternoon snack.” The man stopped smiling.
“It’s how coyotes make a living,” I said, trying to take the tone of a naturalist rather than a meddling surrogate parent. “Separate the little ones from the big ones and snatch.”
“Amanda, get up here!” the woman called out. The taller girl, still whooping and giggling, began climbing reluctantly out of the creek bed.
“Coyotes are shy of humans – adult humans, that is.” Now I was heaping it on, but the pedant in me couldn’t resist. “They see your girls and don’t think, ‘Uh-oh … human child.’ They think, ‘Mmm … object size of lunch.’” I tipped the bill of my hat, wheeled on my heel and headed for the mountain.
Canis latrans is no stranger to California. You’ve probably seen the “little wolf” roaming our regional wilderness – even our manicured ’burbs – between sunset and sunrise. It’s tempting to consider its presence an incursion into our territory. Truth is, it’s we who’ve muscled into coyote territory. Suburban sprawl has brought the coyote into proximity with humans, and the co-existence hasn’t always been peaceful. Organized efforts to control the coyote population in California date to 1891. Since then, around half a million coyotes are reported to have been killed.
An adult coyote surveys the landscape of Round Valley’s Murphy Meadow.
You can’t blame folks for objecting to the spiriting away of their sheep, chickens and house pets. But the coyote’s diet comprises mainly small, wild things: rabbits, ground squirrels, mice, reptiles; even fruits and berries. A pack of coyotes can take down a deer, usually working as a tag team chasing the deer into exhaustion (I witnessed a breathtaking pursuit many years ago on Diablo’s North Peak). But the coyote usually hunts alone, and wanders into our neighborhoods on its way to somewhere else – or to scavenge.
In their natural state, coyotes avoid human contact. When they lose that aversion, they become a danger to us – and themselves. Want coyotes to continue roaming our regional parks and not your front yard? Don’t encourage them. Here’s a checklist:
• Keep the lid on your garbage bin closed nice and tight.
• Keep pets – and their food and water – indoors at night.
• Discourage the presence of rodents, prime coyote fare, by reducing their protective cover: brush, weeds and wood piles.
• When dusk falls, drag your little ones indoors. Don’t assume your front yard is a safe haven.
• Chase away coyotes that wander into your neighborhood. Yell, wave your arms, throw stuff at them. Trust me: 99 percent of them will take flight. If you draw that other 1 percent, get indoors, call your local police and inform USDA Wildlife Services at 866-487-3297 #3.
Wanderer, opportunist – yes, sometimes thief – the coyote is a vital member of the ecosystem, and one of the planet’s most adaptable creatures. As we Californians hunker down in the heat of August and amid the stress of economic uncertainty, let’s treat with respect our brother-in-adversity, the coyote. The ultimate survivor.