LOL! We know the wolf’s at my door about half the time. Now we can add another critter to the menagerie: Coyote.
The other day Cassie and I went out, as usual, to pick up the newspaper. Opened the front gate and she went bounding out. Luckily I was right behind her, because she bounded straight into the face of a coyote that was skulking around the driveway.
Grabbed her by the mane of hair around her neck and dragged her back inside the courtyard. In the process, I made such a commotion, hollering at her to get back inside, that the coyote spooked and took off like a hungry greyhound.
Here’s a fellow who says a coyote can sprint at 65 kilometers an hour. That’s about 40 mph. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hit that speed in four strides. Before she got past the edge of the wall she was a streak, and when I walked down to the corner to see if I could spot her, she was long gone.
If I’d dawdled inside the courtyard after opening the gate, Cassie would’ve been breakfast!
Coyote profile: Christopher Bruno. StockXCHNG. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
She’s a lucky little dog. I’m so glad she is alright!!
My friend took her dog out for her evening “relief” and was only ten feet away when a coyote snatched the poor thing. Ghastly.
Extra treats for Cassie tonight and an extra whiskey for you for your scare.
That was close. Cassie is lucky you were so close behind her. We don’t have coyotes here but have plenty of destructive raccoons. But I better stop complaining about them. It’s nothing compared to coyotes.
Maybe you should carry a horn or something to scare the coyotes away next time you go walking with Cassie.
Maybe its because I am from a different part of the Country but I may have literally Sh!t myself if I saw a Coyote just hanging out on my front yard LOL. LITERALLY.
Corgis: the other white meat.
A woman I interviewed in Alaska said her cat was walking along the edge of the fence and fell off. She opened the gate to let the cat back in — and saw a lynx trotting away with her cat in its mouth.
(Incidentally, this was within the city limits. While walking out behind my own home up there I saw moose, a lynx, wolves and a black bear, and scented — but did not encounter, thank goodness — a grizzly bear.)
She shrieked and ran toward the animal (probably a bad idea) waving a garden implement, and the lynx dropped the cat and bolted.
Kitty has never walked on the fence since then, or agitated to be let outside the fortress walls. It’s a jungle out there.
@ Donna: Hm. I wonder if she’s all white meat…personally, I prefer dark… Oh! Sorry! That was unkind. 😉
Moving on.
@ Stephen and Evan: Coyotes are actually fairly harmless, unless they’ve become acclimated enough to humans to lose their fear of us. In terms of destructiveness, they’re as nothing compared to racoons and rodents. Matter of fact, as critters that coexist with us, they have their benefits:
They eat roof rats. (Good dogoid!!!!)
They eat cats. (Gooood puppy. Just do it when the neighbor’s not watching, will you?>)
They eat the neighbor’s crowing rooster, so you don’t have to complain to the city’s ordinance enforcement bureau about it.
They cause your dog to appreciate its happy home and discourage it from running off at the drop of a hat. Well. That’s assuming your dog survives the training session.
After enough domestic dogs and cats have been cleared out of an area, even the dimmest lightbulbs among the neighbors figure out that they should keep their pets on their property and not let them roam around yours.
They clean up garbage effectively.
They do not eat your trees or excavate your lawn; to the contrary, they eat gophers.
Unlike the domestic dog, they do not roll a ball underneath your desk while you’re sitting at it and then pick dog-fights with each other over the ball.
They den unobtrusively, beneath the oleanders or whatever kind of ratty shrubbery grows in your part of the country.
And though they’re virtually silent when they live in a city, if you’re out in the sticks they serenade you with a strange and wonderful melody.
The only issues you’re likely to have with them are diseases carried in to your dog (come ON! That’s why we have distemper, parvo, and rabies vaccines) and the fact that they are, at whelping time, interested in clearing the neighborhood of other canids.
@ E. Murphy: ah! an excuse for extra whiskey! Thought those coyotes must be good for something.
Yesterday I spotted one of those long-legged chihuahua mixes everyone’s trying to get rid of these days, running for all it was worth up one of the feeder streets. Lunch wagon!
It’s really not a good idea to let your dog, especially a small dog, off the leash even in your front yard. That said, I’m SURE I’m gonna wrestle Cassie into a leash every time we go out to get the mail or the paper… No. Instead, we’ll look over the wall and make a racket before we open the gate.
I agree about coyotes being fairly harmless. Yes, they will occasionally snatch a cat or a small dog. However, they are mostly scavengers and opportunists. Where I live, they eat avocados and cantelope as well as recently dead things. That’s probably why coyotes are hit along side the freeway. I live in coyoteville. Our house was built in th pathway of an established coyote run. We find coyote scat on our driveway and backyard every morning. Lots of rabbit fur in that scat. Good coyote!
Frankly, I respect coyotes. They are very intelligent and coexisit with humans very well. In fact, were it not for the howling and scat, you would probably never notice them. I did have one sit down on my driveway and look at me quizically. I said “Good morning coyote. Time to move. Shoo, go away”. It stood up, looked disappointed and trotted off. It ws probably ticked off that I had moved into its territory.
@ Charlotte: Sounds like one of your neighbors is feeding them. A coyote that sits there and doesn’t run off from you is either sick or unafraid. Even if you enjoy and admire coyotes (which I do, in the wild), the animal is put at risk if it loses its natural fear of humans. Feeding them will do exactly that, and it’s very harmful to a wild animal, because it puts the creature at risk of being killed or injured by people who don’t want it on their property or don’t appreciated having a coyote make a meal of Fifi or Kittie.
Weirdly, some people actually like being overrun by rabbits (they think bunnies are cute), rats, gophers, and mice, and so they will report coyotes, trap them, or poison them. The two kindest things you can do for a coyote in your neighborhood are a) don’t feed it and b) yell, wave your arms around, and rattle a canful of coins to put a little scare into it. The human is not a coyote’s friend. The coyote needs to know that.