I’ve been reading a very absorbing book- Going Back to Bisbee, by Richard Shelton. It is absorbing at least to this desert rat because I know the area of Southeast Arizona in intimate detail. In the last three years I lived in Tucson, I covered much of the area in my white Rambler station wagon or with my major professor and his other graduate students, plus a few trips with a friend, Karl Stephan, a specialist in Colydiidae beetles.
Shelton has a long discussion about the Coyote and his experiences with this song dog of the west and it got me to thinking about my own visitations with this animal, also known as God’s dog.
I have, I think, mentioned in another diary the time in The Tucson Mountains (where Shelton lives) when a feeling of being watched eventually led to my looking up on the edge of an arroyo into the eyes of a resting Coyote, who was observing me with a disdainful, but slightly curious attitude. It did not move as I drew closer and finally I left it in peace.
The Jornada del Muerto in New Mexico is a fascinating place. Once lush with grass, historical overgrazing and the resulting brush invasion have altered it considerably from what it once was, but it still is vibrant with life (See: jornada.nmsu.edu/.…, www.researchgate.net/…, storymaps.arcgis.com/…, )
Here is a shot of the lower Jornada during a good year.
I spent many hours on the Jornada during my various research projects and I reaffirmed my status as a dedicate desert rat during that period. Several times when I was out in the early morning, I would hear the sound of Coyotes returning from the hunt. God’s dog or the song dog of the West, would give me a very melodious concert and I would take it in as the voice of the Chihuahuan Desert grasslands (and many other ecosystems!), but these creatures were also spotted close to Las Cruces, even along the freeway during broad daylight, and one had to be aware that no outdoor cat was safe if they were around. Still, I liked hearing them and counted it as a red-letter day if I saw one.
One does have to be a bit aware of rabies, which periodically showed up in Coyotes, skunks, bats and domestic animals in the Southwest when I lived there, but generally I trusted Coyotes much more than feral dogs. The latter were more prone to attack!
One day as I was birding in the morning at the Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park along the Rio Grande I was startled by the sudden appearance of a Coyote on a narrow trail across the grass near the river’s edge. I was in fact so startled that I forgot that I had a camera and dumbly stared at the Coyote as it trotted closer, veering off the trail slightly and passed by me within maybe 15 to 20 feet. Other than altering its course, it did not seem much much impressed with me.
At another time, I was blacklighting for a particular moth species in the Davis Mountains of Texas and heard the evening chorus of a Coyote pack going off on their evening hunt.
At these times I did not get a chance to photograph the Coyotes until, on two separate occasions I was surprised by Coyotes within Edmonds Marsh in Washington state and was able to get somewhat fuzzy photos, as for example the one posted above. These animals are everywhere from Canada to Mexico and even in Maine! See: zookeys.pensoft.net/…
I was once asked what I considered my totem animal to be and I did not think twice about it. “Coyote” was my answer. They asked why, and I answered “Because they are survivors!” Those who have read my essays will understand why!
I unfortunately have to end on a negative note. While coyotes are survivors in the long run, they have been persecuted ever since Europeans started running cattle on the rangeland. I ran into two incidents that made me pretty unhappy in this regard. In the first I stopped briefly at one of the wells on the Jornada only to discover the bodies of over a dozen coyotes stretched out on the desert. A flea jumped on me suddenly and I flicked it into a cattle trough, fishing it out and placing into a collection vial. It was a Human Flea (Pulex irritans) and was obviously from one of the dead coyotes, not from me! I did not discover for certain what killed the song dogs, but I suspect a government hunter.
A second incident happened in the bootheel of New Mexico and I was with several colleagues when we stumbled across about ten skinned bodies of coyotes. They appeared fairly fresh and had no associated insects- not even flies. They were either just recently skinned, there were no decay insects around, or the bodies were poisoned. I understand that cattlemen have to face some serious predation from these animals, but there must be a better way.
Like Shelton, I tend to side with the Coyotes (and the Wolves) when it comes to land issues. They were here first!
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