Coyote Yipps

The book whose title inspired the title to this video posting is Don Coyote, by Dyton O. Hyde. The book is a soul-warming book that’s as good as its title. It’s the story of a coyote and a rancher and is subtitled, “The Good Times and the Bad Times of a Maligned American Original”. I highly recommend it for all you coyote lovers out there.

The title I have given this video says it all. In the original Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes, the main character, Alonso Quixano, sets out to battle evil, including windmills who he imagines are ferocious giants: i.e., imaginary enemies. So in this video you’ll see our mighty 8-month old coyote exhibiting a lot of spunk as he takes on something he doesn’t understand and doesn’t like, and he indeed is able to knock it down (but not kill it). The coyote uses his paws and snout to bat the contraption. He also kicks the camera once, and he uses his teeth.

In the video, at first the youngster is really afraid of the field camera and keeps his distance. But within a few days, he becomes brave and takes on the camera he doesn’t like. Field cameras are intrusive: not only do they project light — coyotes can see the infrared — but the mechanism, although at first listen is fairly inaudible to us, in fact, if you put your ear right up to it, can be heard by even humans. So coyotes hear these things and see lights — they automatically are triggered by motion — which react to their presence — only when they are there. Must be perplexing to the coyotes.

I’m posting this both to show the coyote’s mettle and determination, his persistence in the face of perceived danger, and to show how intense their dislike of something can be. Coyotes indeed have very strong feelings about things, including other things in the environment, such as temporary plastic fences which I’ve seen them pull down and even tear at. We need to acknowledge them as having these super sensitivities.