Listen While the Coyote Sings
The coyote yips and barks carried through the darkness coming from the field just to our south. The noise carried on in a back-and-forth dialog for almost a minute. Then all went silent. It sounded like there were seven or eight of them.
Except there weren’t.
The reality is, it was probably two. Odds are, it was a male and a female, a monogamous mated pair whose bond is so tight that they will remain partners until one of them dies. Even then, the survivor likely will not seek a new mate as their grief is that strong. This sort of loyalty is rare among mammals.
In the stories of many North American indigenous cultures the coyote was often mythologized as a trickster. In some ways, the non-anthropomorphic Canid that is the basis of their tales earns this moniker. But the coyote’s goal isn’t deceit for personal gain or malice. It’s for survival.
Coyotes really aren’t that big. Most weigh between 20 and 45 pounds. While they can make short work of the small rodents like mice and voles that comprise the overwhelming majority of their protein intake, they are ever cautious of larger threats and they cannot afford a direct confrontation with them. For the most part, especially in wide open farm fields and prairies, the coyote is a solo hunter. They rely on a sophisticated system of deception to avoid potential threats.
Wildlife biologists call it the Beau Geste effect. Using their voices in varied calls and pitches, combined with a tactically astute use of terrain and location, one or two coyotes can give the illusion of a pack when there isn’t one.
As for that coyote “following” you when you were out for a walk, you weren’t being stalked. In most every case, you’d inadvertently tread a bit too close to a den and were being escorted out of the territory. Because the reality is, humans are a much bigger threat to coyotes than coyotes are to us. A coyote wants nothing more from people than to be left alone.
So there’s never a good reason to kill a healthy coyote. Doing so often breaks up a bonded pair leaving one bereft and in springtime, pups may be left to starve to death. It also leads to a massive uptick in the rodent population. We’ve seen this happen before when someone kills one of our resident coyote. Too many mice and rats is always a bad thing.
Besides, killing one of a breeding pair of coyotes will trigger more reproduction in the wider family unit that inhabits an area. Leave them be and only the Alpha pair will breed. Disrupt that, and the area’s entire coyote population’s biological imperative is to restore the balance. So you can actually end up with more coyotes.
In our dozen years here on the farm, we have never had an issue with predation on our ducks from these crafty canids, thanks to the mules of course. Being half donkey, they are hardwired to dislike any canine, whether it’s a coyote passing in the night or an obnoxious poodle yapping at the mules from a car stopped on the road as the owners take a video of their little pet annoying two mules. (Yes, this happened.)
The times when a coyote has ventured a bit too close to the pasture fence, one of the mules will bark out a warning to let the nighttime visitor know they are not welcome in their turf. When a nearly one-ton mule like Annabelle tells an exponentially smaller coyote not to come any closer, the territorial boundaries are invariably honored without further conflict. If only humans were as virtuous when it comes to respecting the territories of others.
The last few nights have been filled with another sound. The pair of Great Horned Owls that I mentioned before are still here, now having nested and given birth to babies. I heard the parents conversing as the owlets high up in the nest in our spruce windbreak called for their supper.
I’m glad they found our farm to be a safe place to raise their young. We do what we can to minimize any disruptions to the natural world since, even more than growing food, our farm’s primary purpose is being a refuge in the middle of vast and empty cornfields that comprise most of our state.