As I drove to one of the parks this morning, I came across what I thought was roadkill. This was in a dense, residential single-family-home neighborhood. I got out of the car to take a photo and move the raccoon carcass to the side of the road. The body was rigid, so death had occurred sometime during the nighttime. Right then, the Park Department drove by and and prepared to pick up the animal.

At the same time, another driver came by and stopped. The driver blurted out, “That was quick”. He had apparently called the Park Department about the carcass in the street. Then he said, “It was like watching Attenborough, and it happened right there on the sidewalk.” He pointed to a place 20 feet from where I had found the carcass.
” . . Attenborough?”, I asked. “Yes, it was a coyote and raccoon battle.” “Then there must have been more than one coyote?” I inquired. The driver said yes, there were three coyotes, and the death was not at all instantaneous. And after killing the raccoon, the coyotes left it there rather than eating it or dragging it to another location to hide it for later consumption.
Maybe the coyotes had planned to come back for it, but they didn’t for the entire night. Might the coyotes have been scared off by a dog or human who came upon the scene, as the driver who saw the incident? Or, might these three coyotes — probably just the youngsters of the resident family — have left it because they are still being fed by humans and didn’t need the nutrition? The Park person said that their scat showed very little fur recently, indicating that they indeed were continued to be fed by humans. The three, as I said, most likely youngsters, could have gotten into it, being egged on by their own adrenalin and the activity of the other two coyotes — much like a chase that, once it has started, is hard to stop: driven by instinct. Coyotes are not known to kill for *fun*. Raccoons eat many of the things a coyote eats, so territoriality and exclusion may also have been involved.
It’s the first time I’ve seen killed prey, totally uneaten, left behind by coyotes.