wet coyote
We’re being pummeled by rain — our fiercest storm in five years! California has a desert climate, with normal yearly rain averaging only about 21 inches. Last year, in 2013, we received less than 4 inches of rain during the entire year. That is the same amount we are expecting just within these next few days. Streets are flooding, electricity is out, and there is water everywhere.
I waterproofed my camera and myself and headed out into the torrent. Very few folks were out visiting the parks where gophers were being pushed to the surface of their tunnels by all the water: coyotes were aware of these things. I watched this fella, in the driving rain, head straight for a gopher hole and go to work. The mound of fresh dirt around the gopher tunnel opening must have been a dead giveaway to a gopher’s location. He cocked his head back and forth only a few times before he zeroed in on the gopher’s exact location. Notice the coyote’s beautiful diving technique, then his furious digging which sent the wet mud flying in all directions.
He caught his gopher — looks like a huge two pounder — and gulped it down. He then marked the location — claiming, and advertising, his triumph.
He then meandered across the field and within seconds found a second very large gopher. No triangulation, no pouncing, no digging was involved this time — the gopher was just there for the taking, right at the opening to its tunnel. The coyote picked it up, looked around carefully surveying the area, and then trotted across the field to a clump of bushes, eyeing me to make sure I wouldn’t come after his catch. He emerged from those bushes seconds later without the gopher, so he obviously left it there.
He spent the next little while criss-crossing the field searching for more gophers, shaking water out of his coat at various times, noticing and being noticed by a lone dog walker who had bravely ventured out, spooking at noises, warning an unleashed dog away, messaging displeasure at that dog and then lying down and then waiting for the dog to leave when the dog’s owner appeared, and just plain looking around.
-
- criss-crossing the field looking for gophers
-
- shaking out the water
-
- noticing a dog walker
-
- spooking
-
- warning off an unleashed dog
-
- messaging discontentment towards the unleashed dog
-
- lying down while watching the rain and watching the dog leave
-
- watching & surveying
the gopher had been left in a little hollow
He then headed out of the field for about 30 seconds, during which time I hurried to the clump of bushes and found the dead, soaking gopher where it had been carefully deposited in a little depression on the ground.
Maybe the coyote had headed out of the field to see if the coast was clear, because he came back, eyed me suspiciously since I was closer to the clump of bushes with the gopher, retrieved the dead gopher and then retraced his steps in the same direction out of the field.
I watched him carry it a substantial distance, stop and look around a couple of times. He was looking for a place to hide it, apparently, because he then trotted further, to a distant grassy area, looked around to make sure he wasn’t being watched, and buried it. Possibly he would retrieve it and eat it when gophers were harder to catch. We like saving things for a rainy day. Might he possibly be saving it for a dryer day?!
Coyote Yipps 
