Curious Coyotes
As I drove down Highway 55 mid-morning yesterday, I had the privilege of witnessing a gorgeous male coyote make a mad dash across the road. The car ahead of me was barely driving 70, a fact which irritated me tremendously at that time until this magnificent creature made its way across the road and I was grateful that we were indeed driving much slower than was the norm.
What really struck me was the way this coyote was running. He looked like a deer that was leaping in broad, graceful, yet slightly erratic, bounds. For a coyote that had just survived months of our harsh winter, he didn't look mangy or thin. In the seconds I watched him cross from one vineyard and disappear between the rows of the next, I noticed that he was a healthy weight and his coat was gorgeous.
But the odd prancing stayed with me the rest of the day. When I stopped at my parent's house later for a short visit, I told my father about my sighting and about how odd it was that the coyote had an almost a deer-like, yet bouncing gait. He replied that the coyote probably had prey in his mouth and it was this excitement that reflected itself in his run across the road. I thought about it for a second as I remembered that there was indeed something in his mouth that I noticed even at the speed that he had been running. I've observed coyotes in an open field jump a few feet up in the air and then pounce on what was probably a small rodent or rabbit. It's a neat thing to see!
Online, I scanned a few sites about coyotes and found floofmania.com, which stated a few facts about coyotes which I thought were of interest. According to this site, coyotes can run up to 69 kilometers an hour! They've been known to jump fences and are culprits when it comes to stealing eggs. They can jump three feet in the air and 13 feet horizontally. Pretty impressive!
I know coyotes have gotten a bad reputation recently in Niagara-on-the-Lake for their aggressive behaviour on several occasions. But I have a soft spot for them. They are survivors and not because they're lazy. They are constantly hunting and foraging for food and hiding for their own safety.
I read an article last year on a coyote hunter in the area and thought about how little damage coyotes actually do. They have killed small domestic animals, our own cat included when we first moved here. But that is nature. They are hunters, but also play a role in rodent control and other areas. We are not overrun by coyotes. They are not always as beautiful as domestic dogs or wolves. But they hold their own in our area. When I wake up to their howling and yipping at night, I don't mind because I am in the comfort of my home in my warm, safe bed. But the outdoors belongs to them and we need to respect their existence as they do ours.
Lolita Schimann Hale
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