Coyote

Laurainnj, who writes the fascinating blog, Somewhere in NJ, recently posted the story of the coyote down there that tried to carry a toddler off, right out of the family back yard. Many people had very interesting comments on her post and I got to thinking about our experiences with the little brush wolves here at Northview.

About thirty years ago, though I had lived most of my life hiking the mountains and working outdoors, I had never seen or heard one. They just weren't out there. Then on a trip to the Boonville area (not so very far from Canada) we heard a pack howling as we slept in our camper one night. It was a wonderfully eerie, hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck experience.

Soon we were hearing them here, some distance farther south and east. They didn't bother much of anything and were an interesting reminder of wilder places. We still didn't see them, but we knew they were out there.

Then at age 26 I took up milking cows. Soon I married my farmer and coyotes took on a whole 'nother aspect. First they contented themselves with taking our cats. They just LOVE cats! From a high of around forty clustered around the free milk dish (thanks to all the folks who do drive-by drop-offs) we now have seven. Any that don't stay in the buildings are lunch. Next they began to prey on weakened animals like twin calves born outdoors at night. The mother cow can protect one quite successfully, but two are hard to cover. Then they killed a cow that fell down an embankment and couldn't stand. We couldn't get her on her feet, but she looked like she was going to recover, so we were carrying food and water to her with the truck. One morning her hide was almost entirely ripped off, her throat was torn out and, of course, she was dead. So to those who wonder if they can take deer, the answer is a resounding yes, even though they are quite content with rats and rabbits when they can get them.


Later a pair of them drove the visiting nurse off the back porch when she stopped to care for my late mother-in-law who was receiving hospice care. The nursing service called us in high dudgeon to come get our dogs off the porch so the nurse could get in. No dogs though, just a pair of coyotes that were bolder than they needed to be.

I suspect the one that attacked the child was rabid, like the fisher that attacked a woman in her garage near here, or didn't realize that the child was a person. I have no fear of them bothering me personally, even though I have encountered them many times when walking in the fields. They are bolder than foxes, which bolt willy nilly, but not aggressive-seeming. They offer us dirt farmers a boon in that they kill woodchucks, which otherwise build great mounds of dirt around the holes they dig in hayfields. There is something about a hidden pile of dirt and stones that is rough on farm machinery! We don't miss the chucks as they just adapted to the predators and moved down to the house, where they dig holes under all the buildings.


However, to all the folks who claim that we are encroaching on coyote habitat and thus should be happy to have problems with them, sorry, this time we were here first. Unquestionably people drove wolves out of the northeast and opened a niche for the little wild dogs, but coyotes didn't show up here in upstate New York until LONG after I was born. The cities they are moving into were there many decades before they arrived to sort through the garbage and grab small dogs. I am sure they are here to stay though, so we get calves in off the hill as fast as we can, and are thankful for cows like Zinnia, who would protect a baby from a whole pack of real wolves if she had to.