{"id":14693,"date":"2018-03-15T18:45:56","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T22:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=14693"},"modified":"2018-03-15T18:45:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-15T22:45:56","slug":"coyote-in-the-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/coyote-in-the-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Coyote in the City"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 2018 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Take a walk through the urban forest with your wild neighbor, the eastern coyote<\/strong>.<\/span><\/h3>\n

By Sarah Moore<\/span><\/p>\n

\"APR18-Coyotes-t\"One evening in May 2015, Belinda Erskine was sitting down to dinner with her family in Cape Elizabeth when she spotted something moving in the yard through the living-room window. \u201cIt was small and fluffy. At first, I thought it was a kitten.\u201d Erskine went out to get a closer look. The creature was small enough to fit in her hand. \u201cI sent a picture to my brother-in-law. Then he asked for a shot of the paw. That\u2019s how we figured out it was canine and not a kitten.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

At a loss, Erskine called the animal wardens who service South Portland and the Cape Elizabeth area, which includes \u201cCape Elizabeth Land Trust and a lot of wildlife,\u201d she says. \u201cThey told me to leave the pup outside.\u201d Erskine, reluctant to forsake her to the cold night, \u201cbrought her indoors, wrapped her in a blanket, and placed her in a box on the\u00a0 <\/span>kitchen table.\u201d The next day, animal control officer Corey Hamilton and local game wardens transferred her to a rehabilitation clinic. Hamilton believes the foundling was either a baby coyote or gray fox. And while it came as no shock to Erskine that she shares her yard with a host of non-human residents\u2013\u201cThere are coyotes all around here. I see them lounging on the picnic tables at Kettle Cove Take Out & Dairy opposite my house\u201d\u2013 the experience illuminates how closely she truly cohabits with her wild neighbors. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhile most of us are familiar with squirrels, raccoons, and the odd opossum, few know that the Portland area\u2013especially the urban fringe\u2013also plays home to critters like striped skunks, foxes, minks, otters, fishers, and larger carnivores such as bobcats and the eastern coyote<\/strong>,\u201d says Dan Gardoqui, founder of White Pines Program, an organization that aims to increase education and engagement with the natural world. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had coyotes, bear, and moose all spotted within half a mile of the Casco Bay Bridge,\u201d Hamilton adds. \u201cI get a large number of calls simply because someone\u2019s spotted something they think shouldn\u2019t be living around humans. This is Maine; we have lots of wildlife. These animals were living here long before houses were built in their habitat.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

While we might thrill at the sight of bears and bobcats, the common coyote is derided as a more prosaic and verminous type of hunter. Have we simply been programmed to mistrust the canny canine? <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe coyote is an American original,\u201d says Dan Flores, author of Coyote America<\/em>, in which he explores how the creature became the victim of a negative PR campaign in the early 19th century. Flores calls out government agencies and even Mark Twain, for his 1870 travel book Roughing It,<\/em> as culprits in the anti-coyote regime. Despite this, the coyote has proven to be one of the nation\u2019s most enduring and adaptable icons, now inhabiting every state except Hawaii. \u201c[Its howl] is our original national anthem.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wile E. Coyote, perhaps we\u2019ve been looking at you all wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

God\u2019s Dog<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSimilarly to tigers living in cities in India, coyotes in urban areas find small green spaces to live and reproduce, coming out at night when we\u2019re in bed,\u201d says conservation biologist Geri Vistein, founder of coyotelivesinmaine.com. But Vistein is quick to point out the canis latrans<\/em> is no urban interloper. Coyoti<\/em> is an ancient creature, named by the Aztecs and revered as a trickster god in Native American mythology. \u201cThe coyote has been here since the first people crossed the Bering Sea into the Americas,\u201d she says. \u201cIn fact, archaeologists have found coyote bones in New England from 30,000 years ago\u2013predating the Ice Age.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Until the early 19th century, Maine\u2019s mountains and dense forests were the kingdom of the gray wolf, while coyote territory mainly stretched west from Illinois to the Rocky Mountains. When human predation decimated the two million-strong national gray wolf population, there left a gap for the infinitely adaptable coyote to make its return to New England, bringing with it a whisker of its lupine cousin. \u201cCanada didn\u2019t destroy its wolf population to the same extent we did,\u201d Vistein says. \u201cAs a result, some of the few remaining males wolves in the Ontario region mated with coyotes. You can see this in the larger jaw muscles that allow them to take down larger prey. Our coyotes carry a mix of wolf genes, but they are coyote, coyote, coyote<\/em>. The wonder and wisdom of nature saw a space to fill, allowing the species to adapt and survive.\u201d This innate knack for survival in a changing world has seen the coyote flourish where others like the gray wolf have fallen. Vistein emphasizes the animal\u2019s intelligence, too. \u201cCoyotes used to have relatively harmonious relationship with Native American tribes. They knew where people were, rodents would be. I work with a farmer in Maine who, during the summer haying season, will start up his tractor at night and see the coyotes appear like clockwork in his headlights, waiting for the machine to flush animals out of the dry grass.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

In the Neighborhood<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

For those of us living in the comfortable cushion of urban and suburban communities, stepping out at night in our slippers, perhaps, to put out the garbage or sneak a surreptitious smoke, the flash of a pair of wild eyes can send a jolting moment of primitive fear through our bodies\u2013a quick blast of Freud\u2019s Uncanny. National organizations like Project Coyote and Urban Coyote Initiative aim to redress the hostility felt toward the beasts living in the margins of our cities. \u201cBy eliminating natural predators and natural barriers of habitat, humans have literally paved the way for coyotes to explore new territories, including the prairies of suburban lawns and the forests of skyscrapers in cities,\u201d reads the mission statement on Urban Coyote Initiative\u2019s webpage. <\/span><\/p>\n

The reasons for wildlife residing and reproducing in places like Portland are \u201ccomplex,\u201d according to Gardoqui. \u201cChances are, the abundant food resources are a big draw. Cities have a lot of \u2018live\u2019 foods like squirrels, mice, birds, and rats as well as a some \u2018non-live\u2019 food sources wasted by humans,\u201c he says. These appear particularly delicious to coyotes in April, when male and female pairs are raising litters of pups. However, they\u2019re a lot less likely to grab a quick takeout from your garbage than a raccoon. An Urban Coyote Initiative study of over 1,400 subjects showed coyotes supplement their diet with only 1.3 percent of our discarded lettuce heads and diet shakes. <\/span><\/p>\n

As for any threat to us and our beloved Fido and Felix, \u201cThe risk of humans or their pets being harmed by wild coyotes is very, very slim,\u201d Gardoqui assures. There has only been one reported human fatality caused by a coyote attack, in 1981. When it comes to our fluffy family members, awareness is key. \u201cI\u2019ve seen how pet owners have become a lot more responsible in the 27 years I\u2019ve lived in Maine,\u201d Vistein says. \u201cBut we need to remember, if you leave your little five-pound toy dog in the yard at night time\u2026Well, to a coyote, that\u2019s no dog, that\u2019s dinner! The same goes with cats. We tend to let our feline pets roam in urban areas, but that\u2019s a potential dinner for a coyote.\u201d During pup season, dogs are as likely to threaten coyotes by interfering with their dens and stressing the mother and babies. \u201cKeep your dog on a leash or in sight of you,\u201d Vistein urges. As for those bird feeders you lovingly hang in hopes of the scarlet glimpse of a cardinal? \u201cTake them down,\u201d she says. \u201cIt goes against what we\u2019ve been taught, but more seeds on the ground means more rodents. You\u2019re inviting coyotes right into your yard.\u201d Though our kinder nature may tempt us to leave out snacks for furry and feathered friends, \u201cIt\u2019s not a natural part of the ecosystem.\u201d The same goes for intentionally leaving out food for coyotes themselves. \u201cThose species have survived the winter without us for millennia.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

When left to their own devices, coyotes control rodent populations\u2013a boon in our litter-strewn urban areas. They\u2019ll also deter felines, allowing bird populations to flourish.\u00a0 <\/span>And while these adaptable and fiercely intelligent creatures have learned to live among humans, we\u2019re still learning how to coexist with them.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cThey don\u2019t want to interact with humans in the vast majority of instances,\u201d says Dan Gardoqui, \u201cmostly because when wild animals and humans tangle, it usually doesn\u2019t end up well for the animal.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 2018
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