{"id":16906,"date":"2019-10-30T17:16:52","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T21:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=16906"},"modified":"2020-04-30T10:07:20","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T14:07:20","slug":"coyote-lovely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/coyote-lovely\/","title":{"rendered":"Coyote Lovely"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 450px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23d2d2d2&amp;backgroundColorFullscreen=%23d2d2d2&amp;d=nov19_flipbook_final&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=14&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I<\/span><span class=\"s1\">\u2019m night driving on I-295 when she turns and stuns me\u2014a flash\u2014with her Elizabeth Taylor eyes. (They\u2019re violet!) Then she trots off the highway and disappears into the woods.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">We\u2019re sharing Maine with over 15,000 coyotes in 2019. The number is rising. Now coyotes are everybody\u2019s scapedog. Police reported a possible \u201cpugicide\u201d (with no real evidence) on Horseshoe Drive in Scarborough recently. It became a headline. Maybe that\u2019s why shooting coyotes in Vacationland is legal year-round (except for Sundays)\u2014even on Christmas. You don\u2019t have to be a Maine resident. All you need is a small game hunting license.<br \/>\nVisit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maine.gov\/ifw\/hunting-trapping\/hunting-laws\/other-species.html\">www.maine.gov\/ifw\/hunting-trapping\/hunting-laws\/other-species.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Night hunting coyotes is legal from December 16 through August 31. Be careful. Coyotes may not have guns, but they\u2019re dangerous wild animals. I understand they threaten the balance of our suburban lifestyles and chew at the edges of our comfort zones. Still, it tugs at my heart that there\u2019s no ceiling\u2014or \u201cbag limit\u201d\u2014for the number of coyotes anybody can kill.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Why don\u2019t we hear more outrage against killing coyotes? Aren\u2019t they members of the dog family, too? Is it because a coyote might possibly threaten our labradoodle when we let him out for a few minutes under the stars? That tells us more about ourselves than it does about coyotes. Coyote distrust doesn\u2019t survive a fact-check. \u201cThere have only been two recorded incidences in the United States and Canada of humans being killed by coyotes,\u201d reports HumaneSociety.org. \u201cIn the 14-year period of 2005 through 2018, canines killed 471 Americans. Pit bulls contributed to 66 percent (311) of these deaths. Combined pit bulls and rottweilers contributed to 76 percent of the total recorded deaths,\u201d says DogsBite.org. Where\u2019s our hunting season for pit bulls?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Coyotes aren\u2019t at all ugly. Neither are they \u2018trash\u2019 migrants from the western U.S. Skeletons of our wily Downeast species have been discovered in New England that date before the Ice Age. See our story <a href=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/2018\/03\/coyote-in-the-city\/\">\u201cCoyote in the City\u201d [April 2018]<\/a>. They all but vanished for centuries. Isn\u2019t there a better way to welcome their return?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">If your hackles are up because <em>Canis latrans<\/em> are sly scavengers, compare their behavior to the scarfing up of free food in the Old Port during happy hour.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p3\">\n<p class=\"p3\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/category\/editor\/\">Click here to\u00a0view past\u00a0<strong>Letters from the Editor.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>November 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[356,512,513,127],"class_list":["post-16906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor","tag-colin-w-sargent","tag-coyotes","tag-hunting","tag-maine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16906"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18439,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16906\/revisions\/18439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}