Walking With a Coyote

The adaptable “Song Dog” surprises a desert dweller

Aug 29, 2021

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When the moon ups
Night denizens howl news
With crescent light
The hunt is on

Ethan Applegarth
Casa de Cuerva, 501 Poems

THE GRAY EAR TWITCHED as the coyote stared at me. I was out for a walk on a country road in the Southern California mountains, and the animal had stopped to observe me for long seconds as he crossed the road. His multi-hued coat included grays, caramel tan, and white, all accented by a black nose.

I’ve seen numerous coyotes at the rural places where I’ve lived. They are often at the edge of my perception, slipping away from sight as if to say, “I was just leaving.” Masters of camouflage and quiet movement, the coyotes blend into any landscape they inhabit. You may not see them, but they will see you.

Coyotes are sometimes referred to as North America’s “Song Dog” due to their vocal talents. These range from yips and barks to musical sliding howls. Their eerie wails are a part of the soundscape of the American West. Their calls have been referred to as the “original national anthem” in an NPR interview about coyotes.

Coyotes (Canis latrins) are part of the canine family, more closely related to our household dogs than wolves or foxes. Coyotes used to live mainly in deserts and open prairies but have expanded their range and now live in forty-nine U.S. states, including urban areas.

Lessons in survival

Coyotes are one of the few creatures that stoically survive during this time of heightened animal extinctions. How? They have the deserved reputation of being smart. Their clever group hunting techniques can even bring down a larger animal such as a deer. (Just make sure it’s not your pets by keeping them inside at night and in safe outdoor places.)

They are omnivorous and opportunistic eaters, consuming fruits, seeds, plants, insects, and even human food when they find it. Their scat reveals what they eat in various seasons. In the desert, one can see date pits in their droppings. But like most canines, they prefer to be carnivores, catching birds and small mammals.

Coyotes survive by being masters of adaptability. Their skills were admired by indigenous cultures and coyotes are a totem animal among some western Native Americans.

An unusual coyote encounter

Living in the American West, I’ve experienced or heard about dozens of coyote encounters. The most intriguing one was told me years ago by a relative (a well-educated professional woman) who lived in the California desert mountains above Palm Desert, not far from where I lived at the time.

My relative’s neighbor/friend, whom I knew slightly, was the source of the unusual coyote encounter. I’m preserving her privacy by calling her Pat. She was a respected leader in the community, an animal lover, and a naturalist educated and trained in life sciences. Since I wasn’t present at her coyote encounter, I’ve had to fill in a few narrative and geographic details, but the story is otherwise listed as reported to me. It shows how animal-human interactions can have unexpected consequences when two species find some mutual trust.

Pat lived on several mountain acres studded with large boulders weathered reddish-brown with desert varnish. Gnarly pinyon pines are the tallest living things around. Temperatures here soar over 100 degrees F in the summer months. Snow can fall in the winter. It’s a place of dramatic and rugged beauty. Boulders dominate the scene with their sculptural forms. The Santa Rosa mountain range climbs up in successive ridges to heights of 8000 ft. behind the sparsely populated neighborhood.

One early summer morning, Pat heard a coyote yipping nearby. This close vocalization was unusual, as they rarely approached the house in the daytime while her two large dogs were in the fenced yard. Her dogs responded with loud, startled barking. Pat was busy inside, so she tried to ignore the commotion for a minute. It did not stop, so she headed to the door to investigate.

She scanned the scene, trying to locate the coyote, but couldn’t see it. She tried to calm her dogs, then headed back inside. Moments after she had gone inside, the coyote started yipping again, and her dogs set off again with furious barking. It was a cacophony of canine noise.

Again she headed outside. This time, she could see the grey-furred coyote standing at the edge of the dirt parking area, watching her. It yipped again as if to say, “This is urgent—pay attention.”

Pat was puzzled and started feeling uneasy. She had decades of experience working with animals, but one does not just walk up to a carnivorous wild animal when it calls to you. Pat brought her dogs in to the house, thinking the coyote might be disturbed by their presence. She shut the door and moved to the window to observe the coyote.

The coyote walked closer to the house, stood facing her door, and started yipping again. It seemed the animal was trying to get her attention. What should she do? It could be dangerous to get close to one. Coyotes have occasionally attacked people, though rarely adults. She reasoned that this behavior, openly done in the daylight, had nothing to do with hunting. Could the animal be acting differently because of illness or an injury? She saw no signs of either.

Follow the animal?

After about 10 minutes of continued yipping or barking from the coyote, Pat decided to go outside and see what the animal would do next. She stepped out of her door, making eye contact with the coyote. She thought, “I’m here, now what do you want from me?” It watched her for a few seconds, then turned its back on the house and walked a few steps towards the mountains, pausing to look back at her. Pat stood still, her heart pounding. The coyote was asking her to follow it!

She carefully walked out, keeping a respectful distance between herself and the wild animal. The coyote set off, pausing only to make sure Pat was following. There were only faint game trails once they ventured beyond her property. She followed the coyote around boulders the size of cars, and they climbed up a slight rise.

Pat felt uneasy, picking up on the urgency of the coyote and the unusual situation she found herself in. What if there was a coyote pack nearby? Would she be safe? She had left no note even saying where she had gone.

They topped the rise, and the land sloped down towards a desert canyon. The view displayed a rugged landscape folded with ridges and ravines stretching for miles. After about ten more minutes of walking and rock scrambling, the coyote climbed up onto a clutch of boulders, peered downwards, then barked. After a moment, a whine came from behind the boulder. Another animal?

The coyote Pat had followed nimbly jumped off the boulder group and stood nearby as if to say, “Now you get to look.” Pat gingerly climbed up the large rocks and peered down into the darkness of a narrow crevice formed by the boulder grouping. Inside the shadows was a young coyote pup stuck between the rocks. It was dusty and looked worn out from trying to climb up.

She puzzled out how to get the pup out. When you go for a walk with a wild coyote, you don’t usually take ropes or rescue gear. She had nothing with her except the clothes she was wearing. She didn’t want to make the trek back to the house and possibly not be able to find her way back to the trapped pup, who might be getting dehydrated.

Pat stripped off her shirt and bra. She wrapped the shirt around her hand and arm to protect against sharp teeth and rough rock. Laying down flat on the boulder, she tied her bra around the pup’s head and eyes to reduce its fear. She reached into the crevice as deeply as possible, searching for a way to hold on to its body. The pup whined as she tried to get a grip on it. After several attempts, she managed to get a sufficient hold to pull it up and set it on top of the broad rock.

The mother coyote waited for Pat to leave the boulders before bounding up to lick and nudge her young one. Pat watched as the two happily reunited. She wondered how long the pup had been stuck— a few hours, overnight, days?

Her shirt and bra had gotten dirty or torn in the rescue, so she turned to head home naked from the waist up, hoping she wouldn’t run into any neighbors out hiking. On reaching her home, she reflected on the intelligence of a mother animal who asks for help from another species when she can’t save her offspring by herself.

After hearing this story, I wondered, did the coyote mother, through careful observation, pick Pat out from other neighbors as a “safer” human? Did it approach other people first? This story would not have happened without some mutual trust between them. And what leap of courage did it take for this animal to approach a person when humans have often harmed coyotes?

We’ll never know the answers to these questions, but I’m sure the encounter was memorable for all three living beings.

Changing attitudes about predators

Across the U.S., coyotes have been the target of extermination campaigns for over a century. 400,000 to 500,000 (half a million!) coyotes are killed here each year. What makes us judge some animals as “bad” and others as “good?” How we treat all species is a reflection of our humanity.

The Coyote Project, a national non-profit group promoting compassionate conservation, is working to lower the deaths of predators. The group educates about the coexistence between humans and wildlife, especially predators like coyotes and wolves.

In California’s Mendocino County, a historic change happened in August 2021. The Coyote Project fought for years and finally won the right to replace a cruel trapping and poisoning animal control program with a more compassionate approach. It was one small win for coyotes and the people who value them and their role in the ecosystem.

Maybe the next “win” will be a willingness to engage more with intelligences that are different from ours— and to learn when to ask for help.

Listen to an evocative coyote ballad composed and sung by California folksinger Rita Hosking.

I love to hear from readers! Do you have any coyote encounters of your own? How did Pat’s story affect you?

Mother E