Cats are known to toy with their prey: they don’t kill it immediately, but rather they allow it to stay alive just enough to move and try to get away, then they re-catch it over and over again. We think of this as cruel. Other animals besides cats do this, including coyotes. As I watched, the process seemed to drag on and on forever. When I later examined the time-stamped photographs, I was able to see that the entire episode took less than two minutes. It was a long, long two minutes for me.
I was watching, and the coyote knew I was watching. I wondered if the performance was for me. As I was watching, I wondered if the coyote was testing or tempting me to see if I would come in and grab the prey — I say this because of the way the coyote kept looking at me. I’ve now seen this type of activity twice. The first time I saw it, the coyote ended up eating the little vole. But the second time, the coyote actually abandoned the prey by dropping the victim and leaving. I wondered if he had left the prey for me? Or was the vole just too small to be worth it? I have seen a couple of voles left — heads cut off — and wondered what the significance of this was, if any.
