Song Dog
Coyotes enjoy a shared ancestry with your dog. So, why do we persecute them?
My neighbor, age sixty-something, has waged a war on our local coyote pack. Very early in the morning I hear his shotgun. The noise is startling, territorial. I imagine my small herd of horses dispersing like stars, the coyote lying motionless on the hill.
Later in the day, I meet my neighbor in the clearing between our properties. I ask if he fired the shots.
He smiles, “Yeah, I finally got that coyote I’ve been after. He goes after the rabbits and, anyway,” he adds, “he didn’t look too healthy. I think he had the mange.”
We moved to the northwest hills of Connecticut fifteen years ago. Our new house lay in the direct path of a nightly coyote run. We’d wake, pre-dawn, to the pack racing past our bedroom window, howling and yipping as they raced off to what our neighbors had nicknamed, Coyote Ridge.
The barking and howling was electrifying, like no domestic dog sound I’ve ever known. We kept our Border Collie under close watch.
The coyote scares me, but I con…
