Coyotes in your backyard

OK, I haven't posted to this blog since October and a friend correctly guessed that it was because I was concentrating on writing nature articles for the local weekly newspaper. The paper publishes my articles every 2 to 3 weeks at my request. I didn't want to do it more often because it would then seem like a job.

So....I decided that if nothing else, I could at least post the newspaper articles here. I will post the article after it appears in the paper. There will be some catching up to do look for about 7 articles now and then one more every time one hits the paper.

The picture here did not appear in the paper because I didn't have this picture at the time. I took this picture of a beautiful coyote in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in October 2007 on the way to a hike.

Coyotes here in Fairfield Glade? You bet! And here’s the story.

As everyone knows from watching those old Westerns on TV, coyotes live in the southwestern United States. That is pretty much where they lived back in 1492 when Columbus arrived. But a crazy thing happened over the last 500 years….we humans wreaked havoc with nature.

One of the things we did was kill all of our competition such as Mountain Lions, Wolves, Bears, etc. These animals were the top of the food chain until firearms, traps and poison wiped out or greatly reduced them from their original range. Especially with the wolves gone from the lower 48 states, a void was left that coyotes were all too happy to fill. Wolves have since been reintroduced in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana and there is a small population in parts of Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. But in most of the eastern U.S. coyotes rushed in to fill the space where wolves once roamed.

One web site says that it was 1985 when coyotes were first confirmed in the Smoky Mountains. That is probably about the same time that they found Fairfield Glade.

Coyotes look very much like small German Shepherds. Supposedly, one way to tell is that coyotes travel with their tail down (not between their legs, just down) while dogs usually carry their tail up. But don’t worry too much about trying to identify them…..coyotes are rarely seen. Even living in the southwest for 15 years, I only ever saw a handful of coyotes, even though I heard them many times. And they are smart, too. It was years before I realized that all armadillos aren’t flat but you will rarely ever see a dead coyote on the highway. However, one way to know that coyotes were in your neighborhood in Dallas was that your night roaming cat suddenly turned up missing. Coyotes love cat snacks.

Coyotes are rarely a threat to humans unless they become conditioned to getting food through either garbage left out overnight or pet food left outside. Even then, they usually skedaddle at the sight of a person. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency website says that in “recorded history there have only been 30 cases of coyote attacks on humans, while 3 million children are bitten by dogs each year.”

My wife Nancy and I were lucky to see two coyotes in Fairfield Glade last winter. We were walking along a back road near our house one morning about 10am when two deer ran across the road in front of us. I was curious why the deer were in such a high gear. I knew the answer when 2 coyotes appeared on the road a few minutes behind the deer. They stopped and looked at Nancy and me for 5 or 10 seconds, and then they were off. Coyotes probably don’t often catch healthy adult deer, but like all predators they will always look for a weakness. These two either knew something about the deer they were chasing or they were hoping to get lucky.

We hear a pack near us several times a week in the summer when we have our windows open at night. Sometimes we hear them twice a night, sometimes just once a week. They yip and yap more than they howl, but there is no mistake when a whole pack sounds off….it is beautiful music.

Coyotes! They are here in Fairfield Glade even though you may never see them. Step outside at night and listen or better yet, sleep with you windows open in the summer and you just might be lucky enough to hear one of the great sounds of nature.