More Razor Sharp Awareness and Concern: Lapis and her Brother

25 Feb 2024 4 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in altruism, awareness, care for each other, siblings

Lapis has been limping. It’s not a hard limp, but a definite limp. It must hurt her because she stops her walking and lies down apparently to relieve the pain.

Brother then comes by and can sense why she’s lying exactly this way. He comes by, keenly focusing on her eyes — eye-to-eye communication, caringly reading every nuance of her reaction to himself as he gets closer. He’s looking to see if she might not want him to come closer. I know she trusts him because he has earned that trust.

He is always attuned and responsive to her, whether when she’s ready for a chase or just wants to sit. He knows she has a painful leg. Fascinatingly, and I’ve seen this before a number of times, he SNIFFS her foreleg, not just to find out more about it, but also to let her know that he knows about it and that he is concerned. She trustingly watches his very careful and deliberate approach. I myself don’t know if pheromone markers of any type are produced by such an injury, or if simply the heat from the injury is what he detects, but he is able to detect what he needs to. I’ve seen this same type of awareness and detection several times: 1) In this photo, a female found out more about her mate’s injury by smelling it, and then prodded him to move out of the area where dogs might continue to chase him (see photo below from SPCAHSU Peninsula talk]; and here a sibling sniffed to find out about her brother’s injury and then tried channeling his movement to safer places: Cat prodding Sparks.

When Brother appears, he doesn’t poke or push, he simply sniffs and then slowly lowers himself to the ground next to her to lie by her side, as though he wanted to be a comforting presence. I was enthralled watching this: mostly the subtle eye to eye contact, keen mutual awareness, and caring responsiveness.

These two are highly intune, almost telepathically communicative with each other. Mostly, they are understanding and empathetic and warm towards each other in a way I think most of us humans are not aware of, or even, often, capable among ourselves unless it’s a very intimate relationship. When he looks at her, you can FEEL this understanding of her.

When he plays with her, he only plays as roughly as she plays. If you have a dog, you’ll know what I mean: my dog would play tug of war with me, but always only as roughly as I would. If I pulled gently, she would only use that same force to play with me.If I tugged much more roughly, she exerted that same force, in other words, playing at MY level of capability. I’ve seen this brother coyote play with his much larger and more developed brother, and that is a totally different, rough and tumble, competitive and even forceful interaction. In fact, this caring brother in the end always submits to that roughhouse brother in order to stop the rough play.

2-5

Razor-Sharp Awareness and Concern: More on Lapis

16 Feb 2024 4 Comments

by yipps:janetkessler in awareness, communication, Injuries

As Mom stares at daughter’s strange eye, daughter warns her to leave it alone.

Recall that Lapis — the 10-month-old female who I’ve written about — has an eye condition which is either congenital, or possibly an early injury. According to the vet, her eye isn’t hurting her or she would be squinting it. But we don’t know if she can actually see out of it, though she appears to because she doesn’t turn her head to favor her *good* eye. We also don’t know if the eye itself, or the socket around it might be more sensitive than normal to the touch in any way.

Mom stares into her daughter’s compromised eye trying to figure out why it’s odd.

These photos above show her mother’s keen awareness of that eye. In other words, to us the eye stands out visually, and it does the same for her mother. This “staring into her eye” lasted many moments, probably trying to figure out what might be wrong, or figuring out if there is a way she might fix it. So for example, if there was a foreign object in that eye, Mom might be able to physically pull it out, but, of course, this is not the case here.

a foreign object & goop in the eye

And here, to the right, is a photo of such an object lodged in another youngster’s eye: mostly goop around something the size of short fur. This is not Lapis’ situation. This is a coyote youngster from an entirely different family, just to show that grit and objects sometimes end up in eyes..

With Mom’s intense gaze, along with her body movements indicating she was about to approach that eye, Lapis pulls back her lip and bares her teeth with a snarl: a clear message that this kind of intrusion, even from her mother, would not be welcomed: “Please DON’T!” At the same time, Lapis emits a few high-pitched squeals of pain at her mother: “Please STOP!” emphasizing that anything the mother might try is going to hurt her.

Brother comes to sister’s rescue: sensitively and intelligently!

After Lapis emitted those short squeals of pain, BFF brother comes over to his sister’s defense. He seems to know she doesn’t want to be poked at, even by a well-meaning mother. In this family, he has spent the most time with his sister: he and his sister play constantly and I’ve watch them achieve a very nuanced and keen awareness and understanding of, and communication with, each other, and I’m sure it’s even deeper than anything I can see. So he is more intimately aware, even than his own mother, of what his sister’s feelings and needs are: I would say that he has a handle on her very essence.

Of course he has to be very diplomatic and careful how he “tells” mom to back off: this is hard, because naturally Mom is top dog here and everyone falls in line under her. Since she is the dominant one and he has to submit to her, he messages Mom gently to move away by offering himself to be groomed instead. What a brilliant move!

Above: brother inserts himself in front of Mom to be groomed, and she obliges.

Well, that solved the problem! Sister moves off, and brother becomes the object of Mom’s attention! (2-8)

Presentation on February 24th: “Citizen Coyotes of SF: WHERE they are, WHO they are, and HOW to get along.

10 Feb 2024 Leave a comment

by yipps:janetkessler in presentation, slide presentation

The coyote pupping season is fast approaching. It’s a good time to find out more about our San Francisco coyotes. I’ll be giving a packed 55 minute talk which includes 175 slides and 8 short video clips! It is, after all, a slide presentation, and I’ll have a lot to say, using the slides to illustrate my points. I’ll be covering 1) their population structure, distribution and life cycle, 2) their family life and interactions, and I’ll wind down with 3) stewardship and guidelines for coexistence. In addition, I’ll cover a little about myself and my methods, and at the end I’ll tack on a little about our coyotes in the Randall Museum neighborhood area.

From the Randall: This is “a presentation to accompany the Pops & Pups exhibition. Join us for a special slide presentation and talk by Janet Kessler, AKA “The Coyote Lady.” Janet has been studying, documenting and educating the public with her first-hand information about San Francisco’s wild coyote population for the past 17 years. Learn where they are, who they are and guidelines for coexistence.”

The Pops & Pups: Perpetual Motion” display will be going up on February 20th in this location.

For more about the Randall Museum here in San Francisco, and their announcement, visit them at randallmuseum.org.

Exhibit: “Pops & Pups: Perpetual Motion”

02 Feb 2024 Leave a comment

by yipps:janetkessler in exhibit, photo gallery, Photos

Some of you received a calendar I put together of coyote family life at the end of last year. This exhibit is extracted from that calendar so that more people would have an opportunity to peek into the family life of coyotes.

As many of you know, fathers are important in coyote families: in fact, both parents raise the young, which is unusual in the mammal world. This exhibit mostly displays the helter skelter fun and games between fathers and pups. This behavior is not something seen by most people, the reason being, not only that coyotes are highly secretive, especially with their pups, but most of their activity occurs at night when we aren’t around to see it and when it’s too dark to see it.

The point I want to make is that coyotes are hugely wrapped up in their own family lives. Any of our or our dogs’ interactions with them are peripheral to their family life and are only likely to occur if we impinge on their families and themselves in some way, including through territorial intrusions. The only way to avoid coyote/dog interactions in the city is to stay away from them and walk away the minute you see them. Please note that the display opens around the 20th of February, and I’ll give a general talk on February 24th at noon in the Randall Museum theater. See: https://randallmuseum.org/