Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [50]
A live creek runs through our property, and while we have yet to encounter a cougar, the permanent water source draws a considerable variety of wildlife to its easily accessible banks. Predator-wise, I’ve seen both bobcats and foxes on our property. Nothing clears the sleep from your eyes immediately upon climbing out of bed than opening your curtains to find a fox glaring directly back at you, furious that your actions have startled the ground squirrel it has been patiently stalking among the rocks.
Most prominent and in many ways the most charismatic of the local predators is the coyote, Canis latrans. Not, as Chuck Jones would have it, Eatanythingus gluttonus. So clever and adaptable has the coyote proven to be that it can now be found almost everywhere in the United States, including within heavily developed city boundaries. So well has it done that it has come to be regarded as a “problem” animal worthy of serious control efforts, especially in urban terrain like Southern California that favors its efforts at concealment.
We don’t have quite the same predicament in Arizona, because the coyotes here are not especially interested in concealing themselves. In their never-ending search for prey, they wander at will through the largest cities. Drainage washes and arroyos serve as their highways. While rodents and other small mammals are their preferred quarry, a hungry coyote will eat almost anything. Even a roadrunner, except that this famous member of the cuckoo family is not only hard to catch but compared to other prey is tough, sinewy, and not much of a meal for a large canid.
While coyotes most assuredly will take small pets that accidentally cross their path, like any predator, they prefer their natural prey. Often depicted in film and cartoons as stringy and emaciated, in reality, most coyotes are relatively robust animals. Around my hometown, some have bulked up to positively lupine proportions. Between the locally exploding ground squirrel and rabbit populations, they no longer even have to hunt. They just stand in the middle of the road and let addled hyperactive rabbits run into them.
I once drove the last few yards leading up to our gate only to come upon an enormous coyote standing squarely athwart the dirt road. Unable to drive around it, I slowed and came to a complete stop. It turned, regally, to gaze at me, utterly unmoved either by my direct human stare or the vehicle I was driving. This confrontation continued for some time; the coyote in no hurry to move, I thoroughly enjoying the moment—and not only because relating this anecdote gives me the rare opportunity to use the word athwart.
Eventually tiring of the encounter, I honked the horn. The coyote didn’t move. Leaning out the window, I yelled at the creature. It blinked and looked toward the nearby creek. I let loose with a series of rising yips that I hoped might convey in approximated coyote language both my indignation and impatience. It looked back at me as if to say that one of us was an idiot, and it wasn’t the one who was commuting on four legs.
Finally, after I had shut up and when the coyote was at last good and ready, it loped off into the brush. There it paused to watch me as I drove on past. Clearly, it was deep in coyote thought. Sometimes I wish I knew what it had been thinking. Other times, I’m glad I do not. I have a suspicion I would not have come off well.
Anyone who doubts the fabled intelligence of coyotes has never seen