Coyotes…

Coyotes are a big deal right now because a few wandered into Michael Mann’s film, “Collateral”.    But a movie coyote is nothing like the real thing.

We have coyotes on our hill in Los Angeles.  We live in an ancient home (by L.A. standards) built in 1923.  On a clear day we can see Catalina.  The north-facing slope of our hill is wild.  We hear the coyotes yap yap yap yap  at night.

This yapping is the basis of the genus’ name from the Latin, CANIS LATRANS.  The “latrans” in Latin means “barking”, i.e. barking dog.

The yapping always pleases the house guests. Cheaper than a trip to Africa.

“Yeah,” I drawl (slipping into a kind of a John Wayne accent), ”We got coyotes… possum, too. An occasional skunk.  Even a nursery of raccoons.” 

Wild animals are all cute at a distance, but recently the coyotes had pups and they’ve started coming up to the house.  In fact, they are boldly walking onto the porch.  Mom and her pups. 

Mom is showing them how to steal cat food.  A survival skill in the city.   Of course, if there’s no cat food in the bowl, there’s always the cat, which is why we always overfeed the cats.  A full coyote is a trouble free coyote.

The cubs are skittish but pull off the crime as we watch breathlessly from the other side of the window in our darkened house.

The baby coyote is a goofy little thing.  Ears bigger than two cornstalks stuck onto his head.   These ears can pick up a fly taking off in Mexico.  Their legs are so long they are destined to outrun anything.  They hold their head low to the ground analyzing every scent.   This also gives them the posture of an escaped convict.

So, since they don’t wag their tails and suck up to humans, you don’t trust them much.  You don’t fear them, either.  They don’t have a vicious side like the cute, little raccoon who can tree a human with a hissing charge.

Coyotes just look at you.  No enmity in their yellow eyes. They glance over their shoulder, usually from about the 25 yards they can put between you and them in a fourth of a second when they hear you swallow. 

They look at you as if to say, “I’m just going on my way here.  I’m no threat to you.  I hope you’re smart enough to know that.  No guns please.”

You feel they are smarter than you.   You can imagine their thinking….

A coyote thinks, “I could be running this planet, but I’d have to dress up in those suits and push people around and lie.  That’s not for me.  I like the free life.  Livin’ off the land.  Makin’ my own way.  Let the humans run the rat race.”

Now you might dispute a coyote is that smart but you’ll surely concede the coyote is smarter than my dogs, who go completely psycho when the coyote pup walks past their fence on the way to the watering pan we leave out for him.

My dogs spin and snarl and act like they’re with the World Wide Federation of Wrestling.  You’d think Hitler was walking by. 

What does the coyote do in response?  He looks at them. That’s right.  He’s just a little snot…maybe twelve weeks old. 

He doesn’t bark back.  It’s a waste of breath.  He doesn’t get all tense, because as anyone can see, the dogs are fenced in and harmless.  He casually takes a drink of water,…. looks over his shoulder quickly and then takes another drink.

By now, my dogs’ veins are standing out on their foreheads (if you could see them).

What does the coyote do?  He slowly lowers his rear to the ground and then kerflops his shoulders and his forelegs, which he adroitly crosses on the way down.  He lowers his head to one paw and his eyes close halfway to catch some  morning rays of the sun. 

I know the only thing this poor creature has eaten since his mom left him are figs, cat food and maybe some straw.  But you couldn’t tell it.  Like the bum dressed in a bunged-up tuxedo, the coyote has an attitude unaffected by shortage of essentials. 

Coyotes would be great con men, if they wanted to stoop so low as to wag their tails and pretend to be your friend like those other “whores” of the domesticated dog world do. 

Nothing doing.  A coyote, just like a good con man, only needs a smoke and a cup of jo every now and then.  Regular meals makes a canine fat and slow and stupid.  Coyotes are fast, slender and smart. 

Plus, to be man’s best friend you have to give up your freedom.  You get jerked around on a leash by a control freak.

Coyotes can’t believe bipeds.  When they look at us they aren’t scared.  They think, “How ‘bout some situps…lose that gut.”

The coyote is like a gypsy.  Lives by his wits.  He won’t sell out for a hand out. 

He doesn’t insist on a pretty fur coat.  A nice, mangy number will do nicely.  More important than the pile is the color…mangy, grey/tan.  This lets them disappear on a dry, grassy hillside. 

To get back to our story, I was dreading the next chapter in the life of this coyote pup.  Eventually, I knew the neighbors would start grumbling about the coyote when one of them snapped up Fifi or some other little yip-yip dog.  Or worse, hopping the fence and joining a birthday party of 5-year-olds in progress. 

But looking at this chap, I don’t believe he would go for the kids but I could see him descending quickly and lethally on his cousin Canine Domesticus, the sell-out little yipper who is leading the pointless existence of Louis the XVI. 

But instead of “lynching” the coyote pup, I was hoping to come up with a “Dances with Wolves” effort to establish a link with the coyote across eons of diverging evolutionary paths.    I laid out bacon next to a shirt of mine. Shirt = Food.  My scent = Survival.  Grub = GO to shirt man. 

Did I really think the coyote would go for it? 

Perhaps.  Not because he was stupid but because he was smart enough to accept free food.  I was doubtful he would ever allow me closer than 25 yards.  And there would be no tail wagging and all exchanges of food or clothing or human stuff would be done on his terms.  Period. 

I’m walking that fine line.  They tell you not to feed the wild animals, but if I don’t, there goes Fifi, or Miss Kitty.  Though I do worry one day he will tire of canned food and show up with remnants of Fifi dripping from his gums and my neighbors will start the hunt.  And I’ll be charged with aiding and abetting a known felon because I threw some chow to the last fragile link I have to the old West. 

I grew up (until age 12) in Oklahoma.  When you grow up in Oklahoma, America is a BIG prairie which you can see about 20 miles of but you know it flows on up to Canada, down to Texas and across Kansas and part of Colorado, and over to the Appalachians.  So, America is the ocean of prairie.  (California Americans look at the ocean and draw a similar feeling from it.  Their ocean is water.   Midwestern Americans’ ocean is the prairie.)

So, I’ve settled in L.A. and I’m embedded in this vast city, except we do have a little natural prairie habitat.   And this little prairie and my little coyote are my last link to the America of my boyhood.

The America of my boyhood.  This prairie ocean is filled with tales of survival.  Those who made it and those who didn’t.   You survived by using your wits.  The quicker the wit, the better your chances.  You watched and learned.  You trusted no one but yourself.  You were cordial but never used false social graces to make money.  You would die before dishonoring yourself. 

This was the code of the Old West.   I see a lot of these traits in the coyote. 

The coyote for me is all about the Old West.  Though he’s supposed to be a “yapping dog”, my coyote didn’t get the memo.  He’s silent.  He’s the stealth coyote.  The only way you hear him is if the rock he stepped on five minutes ago shifts a bit. 

The coyote is a native to North America.  In many North American Indian mythologies the coyote is seen as the prankster, who stole fire from the gods, similar to the Prometheus legend in Greek Mythology.  You begin to appreciate Chuck Jones’ selection of the Wylie Coyote character for his cartoons.  He epitomizes the eccentricities of the mythical coyote.

From Remington to Mark Twain the coyote is the closest to the genetic core of what I feel it takes to survive in the West.

Coyotes knew the range of a Hawken .50 caliber rifle before the Hawken ever appeared in the West.  They knew what mankind had up its sleeve.

So I admire this little, scrawny, mangy stealth puppy, who descended from a long line of survivors.  It’s still a 25-yard relationship, but that’s better than I have with a lot of people.   (Don’t get me wrong, these people are physically closer than 25 yards but their heart, if they have one, is miles away…and well-hidden.)

I accept the 25 yards in the people but I sure wish I could close the gap with the pup.

Maybe the coyote knows a 25-yard relationship is the best it’ll ever get with a human, and that’s as close as it needs to be. 

The coyote is thinking, “If I let him get any closer, he’s going to start that ‘C’mere, boy!’ and ‘Good boy!’  and all that pettin’ stuff and sure enough, before long it’s gonna be, ‘Stay!’ or ‘Sit!’  or ‘Roll Over’ or ‘HEEL’.”

“No, Sir.  No, Sir.  I am my own.  I walk my own path.  I keep my own counsel,” the coyote says to himself.

And this relationship will get no closer than 25 yards for that reason.  Maybe someday, when humans aren’t such control freaks, coyotes and humans will get closer than 25 yards.   The coyotes have their doubts.  They’ve seen what men do.  I’m amazed they give us 25 yards.

Love,

Fletch