Paw Injury

He just sat there at first, but the minute he stood up, I could tell there was pain in a paw. Sure enough, within a moment he held it up to keep the weight off of it. When he finally walked, the limp was subtle, but very definite.

He walked in a wide, wide circle around me and looked at me forlornly with ears “airplaned” out to the sides. He moved slowly, coping with the injury and perhaps resigned to living with the pain for a while. I had seen this exact same scenario before in his mother when she had been hit by a car four years ago: ears down, painful movements and a look of sadness. The sadness — I speculated that it might be due to the heavy weight of responsibility she bore — there had been pups to feed. And this was the case with this injured father coyote. Although the father’s injury was not nearly as severe as his mother’s four years ago, I was reminded of the pain, the resignation and that forlorn look from that past injury. In addition to pain, an injury puts a huge damper on what a coyote can do to protect and feed its family — this injury actually occurred back in July, but I forgot to post it. In July there were young pups involved.

I wondered how much parental injury contributes to the low survival rate of young coyote pups. I’ve heard it’s as low as 5-20% in the wild — that’s 5-20% survival rate in their first year. There’s no time to take a break when young pups are around: parents must catch enough food for themselves, and enough food to feed a litter of pups whose nutritional needs, since they are growing, is substantial.

Do coyotes know and comprehend when their ability to live up to their parental responsibilities has been compromised? It is a thought that crossed my mind four years ago when his mother was in the same situation. Of her pups, back then, only two survived, but I don’t know how many she began with.

The father coyote walked ahead and lay down a safe distance from me. He looked over at me and he licked the top of his paw a few times. Then he slowly got up and slowly walked into the bushes.