Coyote in the Park

Got a message that there was a big coyote in the park. I was out wandering so I thought it might be futile, but changed course and made for the park. By the time I got there, 20 minutes had transpired, but the messengers were still there, and so was the coyote. (It’s on the right, at about 1 o’clock silhouetted against the water.) Its being there wasn’t a huge shock. I know they’re there, always have been. (Foxes too.) But it was still pretty neat to see it. Since they’re largely nocturnal, seeing one in the daytime is interesting.

The worry of course is that it didn’t seem overly perturbed by the presence of people, and a cat disappeared recently. A very friendly black cat that I considered a pal. Elvis was his name. Other people around the city have been on television blabbering about the evil coyotes and how they snatched their loveable Miss Miffy McFluffballs. Oh the horror. The spot where we saw them is a promontory where local dog owners take their dogs and let them off the leash to run around. That coyote isn’t stupid. It will wait out of sight for a ball to go over the edge and a dog to follow it and then ambush it.

Coyotes are just fulfilling their natural imperative. They’re predators. They hunt and kill small animals. Larger predators hunt and kill coyotes. My worry is little kids. Would it be brazen enough to make a try for a toddler? They’ve been known to shadow joggers and dog-walkers. They’ve killed humans. (There was a woman in Nova Scotia who was killed by one last year.) It’s not inconceivable that if it were hungry enough that it might pounce on a small child that was running around in a wide open park, with a forested hillside on one edge. Parents look away for a minute, coyote pounces from cover, drags the child down the hillside.

It paced back and forth, disappeared into the woods, came back, paced around, sat, licked its balls. I snuck up to about 30, 40 meters away, using trees to cover my approach. It looked right at me, and didn’t seem alarmed.

Amazingly well camouflaged.

Some close-ups. I really need to get a better camera.

It’s interesting to think that a century ago, heck, a half century ago, someone would simply have walked over to their house, gotten their rifle and shot the thing. Sold the pelt, fed the meat to their dog. Just think of the trouble you’d get into if you did that now.