Surely those lovable, furry coyotes deserve a better fate than being shot to death. In these leaner, meaner times, the coyote should be an inspiration. Why not make it a state mammal to help protect it from its enemies?
Those enemies are powerful, and include Greenwood Village, the wealthiest community in Colorado. This month the Village — which could well afford to set up better-behavior classes for coyotes — instead passed an ordinance hiring private vigilantes to shoot them on sight. Those guys get paid $60 an hour whether they hit any coyotes or not. So parks, greenbelts, watersheds and other public areas will be turned into war zones.
Greenwood Village contends that a coyote attacked a 14-year-old, who fought off the creature and was not injured. Statewide, the Colorado Division of Wildlife reports nine attacks on humans in the past five years. A coyote recently bit a Broomfield woman on her arm before being chased off by her pet Labrador. Broomfield is pondering joining the war on coyotes and Centennial has authorized a “lethal” solution to “the coyote problem.”
Last week, a coyote biting a woman in a Denver park fired up Denver vigilantes. Yet Colorado Division of Wildlife officials have pointed out that coyotes are “compensatory breeders” who will quickly replace any losses to their families.
Shy and secretive, coyotes are active mostly at night. They will eat almost anything, from rabbits to berries to road kill, from domestic sheep and domestic pets to fish and bugs. Coyotes bark, whimper, yip, howl and, especially at dusk or dawn, sing hauntingly mournful songs.
This singing is to attract a lover, not Greenwood Village vigilantes. These virtuous animals are largely monogamous and devoted to their families. They are tolerant of other species; some have mated with domestic dogs. So distinguishing a dog from a coyote is not always easy. Coyote litters average from five to six pups. Their Colorado life expectancy in the wild can be 13 to 15 years, but is generally much shorter. Human predators have killed anywhere from 38 percent to 90 percent of studied coyote populations, according to the book “Mammals of Colorado.”
Colorado, along with many other states, defines coyotes as predators because of the damage they do to livestock, especially sheep. Although trapped, hounded, gassed, drowned, poisoned and shot, coyotes have thrived. There are now more coyotes in more Colorado locales than ever before.
Coyotes haunt Western literature. Mark Twain’s “Roughing It” describes the coyote as “a long, slim, sick and sorry looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless.”
Surely we can move beyond the prejudices of the past and learn to live with brother and sister coyote. After all, this is a new and diplomatic age when we no longer shoot first and ask questions later.
Tom Noel welcomes comments at .
