Coyote Yipps

The first pups of the season have been born! No, I haven’t seen them and won’t for months to come, but I have seen Mom! Mom had been hidden for about ten days, so I knew it was happening. Yesterday I watched Dad. It was about ten days since Mom had last mingled with the family — something she had been doing less and less recently as due date approached.

On this 10th day since seeing her, Dad waited around, a little at loose ends, lying down at the top of various knolls from where he had a good view of the entire area, and looking around.

Finally he jumped up, jubilantly and ran off towards a coyote in the distance where I observed their greetings of kisses and hugs. At first, because it was dusk and dark, I could not tell who it was that he had so happily greeted, and then I saw it was HER, his mate who was as ever so happy to see him as he was to see her. She exuded the feeling of, “Hey, I did it!” The physical difference between when I last saw her and now was that now she was her sleek self again, but now with tits, which was as tell-tale as it gets.

Her entire mood was now different from back then. Back then she was concerned, serious, wary and low-key. Now she was puppy-like: happy, frolicsom, active, and very communicative with her mate, with the usual joyful wiggles and squiggles of an evening meeting. He even groomed her, which I haven’t seen in ages: it’s usually she that grooms him.

Dad is grooming the new Mom here

Young daughter was there, but kept wary, keeping her body close to the ground whenever Mom approached, but there was no antagonism. I’ll keep an eye on what direction that takes.

I know that it won’t be until Summertime that I’ll be seeing any of the youngsters or even how many there are. This is just the first birth that I know about. The other moms I’ve been observing are still pregnant.