Welcome to episode six of Get On a Live, a podcast where me,
your host Ashley, gives you a different animal attack story every week. And
I'm your other post Nick, who sits here and listens and offers basically nothing
in terms of academic value, but you offer a lot and honesty. Oh
yeah, I'll be very honest. I know nothing. I like to act
like I know a lot of stuff, so that usually goes wrong for me.
All right, So anyways, today we are talking about coyotes. I
throw it a poll on our Patreon. In Patreon, if you don't know
what it is, is a service where essentially you can subscribe to our podcast
for different tiers. There's one dollar level, five dollars level, and the
fifteen dollars level, and you get different benefits for each tier. And one
of the benefits is that you could vote on the next species that we talk
about. So coyotes was chosen by our patrons and I could not be more
excited about it. So we might actually break this into a part one to
part two because I have two stories I want to tell, but I also
have a lot of things I would like to share about coyotes. I feel
like give a lot of emotion you want to share about coyotes, I do,
but there's also okay, we need to put out some disclaimers here before
we get started, because there's so much we can talk about and the history
that we have with coyotes is so interesting. But that being said, first
disclaimer, I'm going to tell you the facts of our history with coyotes,
and it's not exactly a pretty one, so it might be uncomfortable at times.
And like I've said in a few other episodes, coyotes and wolves are
like the most controversial species we have in North America. And the more and
more I got ready for this episode, the more where I was like,
yeah, it's coyotes. Coyotes are the most controversial species in North America.
Even saying that forever, how about you tell us your experience with coyotes and
what expertise you have. Thank you for setting me up. Yeah, I
guess coyotes would probably be the species I'm like the most qualified to talk about.
I guess if you could say that, because I did my undergraduate research
on coyotes and part of what goes in I mean a long story short.
If you care about my research and my thesis that I did, I can
send it to you, But it wasn't biologically based. It was more like
the social aspects of how we live with coyotes. But I had to spend
a lot of time researching their history and whatnot. And the book Coyote America
was recommended to me by the PhD student I was working with, Josh,
who is fantastic, And the book Coyote America is by Dan Flores. He's
this awesome historian and the book is so compelling and it's as much about us
as people as it is about coyotes. So I highly recommend for any It's
truly shocking. And I'm going to be using what Dan Flores says in interviews
and in that book for a lot of what we're going to talk about for
the history, just because he's researched it so extensively. So yeah, disclaimer
One, this might be an uncomfortable conversation. Two, because coyotes are a
very controversial species, you might come into this episode with some preconceived notions about
coyotes. And if I say things that upset you and that you disagree with,
feel free to contact us and we'll talk about it with you. People
have already, so we're used to it. Four episodes in, we're used
to the controversy already. Now people just think you abuse animals. So uh,
I had no comment, Like, I don't we can put that out
there. Yeah, First of all, how stupid would I be to be
a wild life biologist who chooses to make a podcast about animals with someone who
abuses animals. I'm not that stupid. Yeah, we don't need to discuss
my animal abuse. I mean we can be petty. I'm totally fine with
that. I definitely won't be petty. I love being petty. Okay,
then we'll keep it in So yeah, I mean, I don't mind constructive
criticism, but like saying that Nicobeese's animals because we joke around is dumb,
a bit far. Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch. But that
being said, I also another disclaimer, Nick and I are both hunters.
We well, I hunt grouse roughed grouse. Nick, you just hunt turkeys,
right, Yes, I hunt turkeys. Okay. That being said,
I think it's important to distinguish that a lot of hunters the joy of hunting
is being out in the woods and connecting with nature. It's not the act
of actually killing the animal. Yeah, I totally agree. Oh absolutely.
The first time I killed a grouse, I apologized profusely and like almost cried.
When I was like ten, I had a turkey lined up at like
five yards of my brother called in for me and I didn't pull the trigger
and I cried for like three days because that was such like a big baby
about it. Yeah, And I think it's important to say that because some
of the things I'm gonna talk about coyotes, that's not the case for a
lot of people in the past. But I would just like to say that
Nick and I as hunters, it is not the joy of killing things that
we like about hunting. It's the act of being part of nature. So
anyways, I just want to say that upfront, because once again it's gonna
be comfortable to talk about. And like I was saying before, if you
disagree with anything that we talk about, feel free to reach out to either
of us somehow. Our email is get Out a Live podcast at gmail dot
com. We've already had one lovely person send us pictures of bears. If
you just want to send us pictures of animals, you see, I'd love
that And Nick will respond to them. I was not allowed to respond to
this one because apparently my response were not appropriate. Yeah, saying a bear
has a big but donk is not really great. I said she has a
dumpster. She was on a dumpster in one of the cat shows that mom
at a big old ass. Anyways, So yeah, I just I just
want to throw those things out there because there's a lot here to talk about.
But like I said, I kind of want to split this into two
episodes. I have a lot to say, but I also have two stories
that are kind of have different outcomes, and we'll talk about the two different
aspects of those outcomes after. Let's start with a little bit of history about
coyotes, or more about the coyotes names, because in the last episode we
talked about the grizzly name and I really like that, so coyote when we
originally okay, let me back up. When European settlers came over here,
they had no idea what to make of the coyote because it wasn't a wolf,
it wasn't a fox, so they called it the prairie wolf. And
it wasn't until around the eighteen forties when the White European settlers made it all
the way over to New Mexico that they met native people who were calling it
a different name. And the name coyote is actually from the Aztec language,
which is super cool, and it was originally spelt coyotl, but the l
was silent. Long story short, because I can go on about this forever.
Mark Twain actually originally described coyotes as like cowardly and scoundrels, and that
kind of set the tone for how Americans felt about coyotes. But he also
was the first to like normalize the current spelling and pronunciation we have of coyotes.
That being said, I say coyotes, What do you say coyote?
I didn't know there was anything anything else. I will shorten it to like
yot Like I heard yot a lot when I was in my time out west.
Like people said that I personally love yotas yotas. I've never heard that
one. I just recently started saying it because it's ridiculous and it disarms them
a little bit. You just think it's cute. I do. I think
they're cute, So any we'll get into it. So I say coyote A
lot of people say coyote. Oh yeah, okay, exactly. I don't
think that's a big difference, honestly, Like everyone knows what we're talking about.
Well, in Dan's book Coyote America, he like goes on to explain
it's a huge long thing about why some people say kyote and why some people
say coyote and can't give it to us some shorthand real quick, long story
short. If you're from more like rural areas, people tend to say kyote
and people from more like urbanized areas tend to say coyote. That's the short
of it. But let's get started. That's good, it started. I'm
sorry, that's good it started. So I'm one of those people who who
used to watch like animal attack shows on Animal Planet religiously because Animal Planet was
the station that was my favorite. So there was a show called I Was
Pray. Have you ever seen it? Uh? Yeah, now I also
grew up on it. Exactly. Probably leads to us making this podcast directly,
honestly. Oh, so this story is I took it from that because
it's the actual guy who got attacked telling the story. However, Animal Planet
does get a few details wrong, so I've used other news sources from back
then, but it's a little crazy because the new sources from back then say
like completely different things. So I'm using his clip from Animal Planets. I
was prey as like the most valid because it's coming from his direct count.
However, that being said, Animal Planet said that it happened in twenty fourteen,
and it happened in twenty thirteen, so you take it with immediately.
They're great. So our story begins on October fourteenth, twenty thirteen, in
Boulder County, Colorado, specifically in a town called Longmont. Andrew Dickett is
a twenty two year old single father to his son DJ and has been since
he was twenty one, and at this point he's living paycheck to paycheck and
working at a tech desk in Colorado. So one week, the belt on
his car snapped and he didn't have enough money to buy a new one since
he was living paycheck to paycheck, so we had to wait. So he
decided that he would have to walk to work. On October fourteenth, at
two thirty in the morning, he started walking so he could get to his
job for five in the morning, and it was a six mile walk on
a back road towards the Rocky Mountains. Just two miles into his walk this
morning, he started hearing some high pitch squeals that made him really uneasy.
So he had a flashlight with him, and he shined a slash light towards
the source of the noises that he heard and realized that they were coyote zipping
and the first coyote he saw, which ended up being the biggest one out
of all of them, seemed really calm despite all the noises it was making.
So as he stared at this first coyote, two more coyotes come around
and begin to approach him. And as he turned his attention to those two
approaching coyotes and shined his flashlight on them, the first coyote attacked him.
So it started by biting his hand repeatedly, and he recalls it felt like
being stabbed repeatedly with a fork, and they were like tugging on his fingers.
So he hit the coyote with a flashlight to have it let go,
And as soon as he did that, that's when the other two began to
attack, and they went directly for his face in his neck at this point
already so soon into the attack. This is merely just seconds in. He
has open wounds on his face all over his arms, and he dropped his
flashlight because he was like, I need both of my hands for this.
However, in hindsight afterwards, he said that dropping a slash light was a
terrible mistake because since it was so early in the morning, it was so
dark, and he dropped his flashlight, he couldn't see where they were,
so he could only see glimmers of their eyes and their teeth as they were
jumping at him. After this, one of the coyotes leaped directly for his
face and bit him right below his jawbone and up into his cheek. Because
it was so dark, he said, all he could feel was fur and
pressure as they were biting him from all sides. And he said that as
they were jumping and biting him, they were also yelping. So it's this
weird mixture of it's dark, all you're seeing his eyes and teeth, and
also it's like a deafening yelping in your ears. Yeah, sensory overload in
a way, like without being able to see, but like all that noise,
that'd be really freaking. Because Andrew was on a back road. He
also had the realization that no one was going to be buying anytime soon to
help him out. So and because it was so early in the morning,
you know, it's not like it's a major road where people normally traverse it,
let alone at like three in the morning. So he was yelling as
much as he could, trying to fend them off. But the coyotes were
really going for his throat, like every single time they jumped, that's what
they were aiming for. And as soon as he'd pushed one away, another
would take its place and try to jump at him. His next tactic,
because this wasn't working just pushing them away, was okay, maybe if I
try to act really outwardly aggressive they'll stop. So when he tried showing that
aggression towards that first coyote, the other two lunged at him simultaneously, and
he managed somehow to grab one of the coyotes that leaped and grabbed it by
the throat, and he started squeezing on that coyote until he felt a pop.
Do you know what that pop? Wash neck might guess it was the
coyotes trachea nice. Oh, this is why people think us, yeah,
Jesus. But anyways, he pops his coyotes strachia, let's it go.
And then they're all like, this is too much for us. We out,
so they leave. He looks down after they're gone and finds his flashlight
and shied out on his arms and they were completely covered in blood. And
this attack lasted like a few minutes max. And this is how much damage
they did. He looked down to his hand that the first coyote was biting
on and saw that one of his fingers was completely bone. It had like
tore all of the flesh off of it. At this point, panic began
to set in and all the pain, but he was really determined to stay
alive for his son because he didn't want his son to have to grow up
without both parents. So he began his three mile journey to the office because
he didn't know any place in between there and his office, so that was
the only place he had to go. So he had to keep making that
journey. As he begins walking, with each step, he's growing weaker and
he's getting colder, and he said he couldn't feel the tip of his nose
or the tips of his fingers, and he had to physically remind himself how
to walk, like okay, lift your right leg, lift your left leg.
That was his entire three miles. So he eventually made it to the
office, and when he tried to swipe his badge at the door, he
was so tired and beaten up that he just felt to one knee and was
basically just stranded outside. I mean, I would hope there were other people
coming in to work at the same time, Like, hopefully someone found him
in a couple of minutes. Yes, he was very lucky because somebody was
already the office and ran outside to help him. What a freaky way to
start the day, Like your coworkers comes in, I'll bloodied up, Like,
oh yeah, because you don't know that could be anything. I would
assume he got jumped by a person, not a pack of coyotes. Yeah,
especially when you hear me tell you about how his wounds looked afterward.
Anyways, his coworker calls an ambulance, stays with him the entire time until
the ambulance gets there. Well, when the ambulance crew arrived, even they
had a look of panic on their face, which made Andrew super uneasy because
that's the last thing you want to see. It's like having a surge and
say, oops, oh remember that scalpel. We gotta go back in.
Oh I forgot a towel in this Oh snap, Yeah no, uh,
I would be very concerned if the paramedics started getting nervous. That's kind of
a not something you want to sea side. Yeah. Yeah. Andrew gets
to the hospital and he truly looked like he had been slashed with knives,
Like you were saying if somebody had jumped him, it looks like somebody just
attacked him with a bunch of knives, because it was just a just slits
all over his arms, his chest, his face. He said. Honestly,
the worst part of all this were the shots that followed, Oh,
the raby shots and all the oh yeah, especially you're attacked by three coyotes
that they're obviously going to assume is a rabbit, because why else that's a
paint not only expensive shot, but also you have to get a butt ton
of them, and they're super painful. Yeah no, yeah, I mean,
so you and I are both vaccinated against rabies. It took like a
series of three different shots over like a weird specific period of time. And
even if you or I were to be bitten by a rabbit or suspected rabbit
animal, we'd still have to get those booster shots, but we wouldn't have
to get as many. So Andrew had to get like tens of shots gross
just for rabies, not even to fight off infection of other kinds and everything
else, like a lot of stuff you worry about. Yeah, brutal,
quick question. Yeah, I've been told by someone who might I know what
they're talking about, that you only need one raby shot and the rest of
her just like fake fake news. Is that true? No, So what
I was saying is that in theory, if you get your pre exposure rabies
shots, you should be good unless you get bit. Well, they give
you boosters because rabies is one hundred percent fatal, so they're not messing around.
They're not going to assume that you still okay. So when you get
your raby shot, you have to get your tighters checked, and that's essentially
checking every year. They draw some blood to see if you're still like,
you still have the antibodies in you, essentially unless they know that you still
have those antie I mean, even if they knew that you had the antibodies,
they'd still give you the boosters because rabies is one hundred percent fatal,
so you're not going to mess around with it. So he gets all those
shots and then he sees his son again, and his son when he saw
him, looked so confused because his dad's face was completely slashed up and different
point. He was little, like a few years old. Yeah, so
Andrew completely healed. He didn't get any sort of infections from the coyote attack,
and his son is now a big brother. The pictures at the UNFA
Animal Planet episode were very cute. So after this attack, wildlife officials went
out and killed three coyotes that they suspected launched the attack within just two days.
Each coyote had very recently eaten, one had eaten like a cat or
a dog, one had eaten a bird, and one had eaten a rabbit.
If you were to guess why do you think this attack happened, immediate
guess is that the rabbit. It seems like they had a half decent food
source, like they all ate recently. It was all different stuff, so
it's not like they got a lucky kill like. No, they were all
eating so being rabbit is the obvious guess. So obviously that's what I would
have assumed too. They didn't have rabies, so why'd they do it?
I'll be honest, I don't know, And I think that's the scariest part
is that no one knows why they did it. So one wildlife official was
like, oh, there was a dead bird nearby, so he probably startled
them when they were on top of their kill and that's why they attacked him.
But to me, that doesn't check at all, because that's not really
a thing coyotes do. Person's a big animal for them to go after.
That's a big risk for them. Yeah, I don't think they want to
try and kill a person over at bird personally, No. But yeah,
like this whole podcast, the point of it is to say, hey,
here are ways that you can avoid doing this or avoid gang attacked. What
are we supposed to tell people with this episode? Were with this story like
I think, Yeah, the guy just got jumped by a gang of coyotes,
Like straight up, they just wanted to attack them and they did.
It's a very good point. Our whole podcast is to help people understand animal
attacks more and that's why this story fascinated me so much because the easy answer
is rabies, and it's just not the answer in this case. That being
said, this is such a weird and rare circumstance and a pack of coyotes
would go after a person. It just like, there's really not a lot
of other stories like this in cases where the coyotes are not rabid. So
that being said, the odds of it happening to you are so so so
slim. I always hear different things about coyotes on whether or not they're pack
animals. So immediately when you say like a group of three, like,
okay, that's probably a pack or a family group of some kind like wolves.
So what is it? Like, is there a difference between Eastern and
Western coyotes like how they pack up? Because I have read, believe it
or not, that Eastern coyotes have more wolf DNA in their blood than Western
coyotes for whatever reason, I can't really tell you if I've read that our
Eastern kyries more likely to pack up than western Are Western coyotes just nuts and
attack people for the fun of it? Like? What's going on here?
I'm so excited to talk about this. I'm excited for all of it,
but this part is so interesting to me. So coyotes have a type of
sociality called fission fusion. Okay, you need to explain this, I've of
course, it sounds like a science experiment. Yeah, So fission fusion societies
simply mean sometimes they're in groups and sometimes they're not. Is there any pattern
as to why they are or why they're not? So sometimes they'll pack up
to attack larger prey, and if they're under a lot of pressure, so
like you know, say there's a pack of coyotes and I go out and
I'm actively hunting them, they'll break off and go off on their own and
hunt smaller things like rodents. So the reason that they're like this is because,
Okay, we're gonna have to get into some of the history here,
and I'm really excited about it. Coyotes are in the Canis genus. I
was hoping i'd have the chance to say that. Would you like to say,
no, it's okay. Coyotes shared a common ancestor with gray wolves,
so coyotes are basically a smaller wolf. Whereas the gray wolf got big and
learned to pack up, coyotes got smaller and learned this type of strategy.
So back when the bearing Land Strait was a thing and we were more connected
to the other continents, gray wolves left. They went to Asia and Europe
and messed around for a couple thousands of years. Coyotes stayed here, red
wolves stayed here, and what's called the Eastern wolf or the Algonquin wolf which
is up in like eastern Canada, stayed here. So after a couple thousands
of years, gray wolves came back. They were different. Not only could
they not breed with coyotes anymore, but they were like, we hate you
and we're gonna kill all of you. The smaller coyote was like ash shit,
peace out, and basically evolved to have this type of fission fusion society
so they could get away from wolves if they were under intense pressure by that.
And this is a great point where I have a question. This might
be a huge stretch for you to know, because it's not really somewhere you're
overly familiar with. On a research side, and Yellowstone are the coyotes there
are more likely to be individuals and impacts because I'm sure with the wolf pressure
they don't get to go after a big prey even if they wanted to,
if they wanted to pack up and go after them, they're not gonna have
a chance against you know, a pack of wolves. They're going after the
same prey. So they're more likely to go after rabbits and squirrels and birds
and stuff like that is what I would assume, which they don't need impact
for they can be individuals. Yes, So this is actually so I looked
into this when I was in college. I did a research project in Africa
on mongeese and how they responded to larger predators like hyenas and lions and whatnot.
But it's the same kind of thing. So what's cool about the whole
Yellowstone experience is that, well, I mean it's not cool. We killed
all the wolves off, which super sucks. Yeah, and we can get
into that later about how we were able to do that. I canna mentioned
Yellstone every episode because it's amazing. Oh yeah, it's super relevant all the
time, all the time. Yeah. Essentially, we had seventy years of
there being no wolves in Yellowstone and we actually got to see what coyotes do
when they are not being actively pursued by larger predators, which is super cool
because yeah, they flourished, so they were able to group up go after
bigger things. But they also we have so much to talk about here,
but essentially they hit caring capacity, which in a biological sense means there were
so many coyotes that if there were to be more, there wouldn't be enough
food. That's actually surprising to me because I know when the wolves left Yellowstone
were killed off from Yellowstone, the undulates exploded and they hit that carring capacity
because they were eating all the vegetation there. But I would assume with all
the higher populations of undulates that the young, the babies, the sick,
the week, there would be so many of them for the carriers go after.
I think they would just keep going, like keep reproducing, keep thriving.
I'm surprised to hear that they actually hit that capacity. Yeah, so,
I mean there was a lot of coyotes though, right, I guess
that's a good point, Like if there's a million of them, like,
yeah, they're gonna run out of food events, just like everything else did.
Like I mean, the the elk ran out of grass. So I'm
sure it's not that shocking to hear that, you know, Carris ran out
of elk and there's only so much space, like physically so much space,
you know what I mean. So yeah, I mean I think now would
be a good time to segue into the extermination of coyotes because it kind of
ties into this. So when you got rid of wolves, this gave the
coyotes the chance to grow so exponentially and begin to move off into other parts
of the country. So originally coyotes were only like really centered in the USA,
And when European settlers came over here, they looked at everything and they're
like, well, we killed wolves back where we lived in Europe, so
what if we just do the same here and like kill everything. So that's
pretty much what we did. We drove off as many wolves as we could.
We put bounties on them so people could kill them and get money for
every wolf pelt or skull they had, and they started doing the same for
coyotes. However, because they evolved so differently, wolves became super pack oriented,
and because they were so pack oriented, they didn't really have the ability
like coyotes do to be on their own and be successful. I mean,
this is a brutal detail, but I want to share it because when I
learned it, I was really upset, and I think if you're upset too,
then so that makes sense. Upset the entire world world right now is
what we're about to do. I'm upset by a lot of things when it
comes to animals and what we've done to them, So I would like to
share it. The reason we were able to so effectively get rid of wolves
is because they're pack animals. They want to hang out with us. Oh
how cool that had been, though, I mean, we have dogs,
so wolf would be so sick. Did you not listen to Oliver? Of
course I did. I know. I know I can't have one. I
know, I know, I know, I know I can't response, but
it take a wolf, yes, But like, okay, no, So
European settlers came over here and killed wolf puppies and would use the scent of
the wolf puppies in the traps to lure in their parents to kill them.
I hate Europeans now, Well, okay, that's the thing. Like,
I'm sure some people who listen are like, ooh, don't make fun of
white people, and it's like I personally would never do this, but Europeans,
Yeah, European settlers came over here, and okay, it only gets
worse. So they killed off all the wolves, right, why do you
kill a wolf? Puppies? They're so cute? What kind of monster?
That's why at the beginning I wanted to specify you and I are hunters.
I would never look at a baby animal and like bludgeing it to No,
I cannot imagine. I'm just talking about Ben kill him last week. Most
of the animals he gets are from hunters who have killed the mom. Like,
they aren't going after a mother bear. But they not. Even it's
people who shoot bears for no reason or for killing a chicken. Okay,
well either way, they didn't. They didn't kill the baby. They didn't
go out go out and say, oh, well cool, I found a
baby bear. I'm gonna go kill it. Now. Even the people who
are actively killing things are not killing babies. You gotta be jacked up to
go kill little baby wolf. And that's what I'm saying. Like, so,
back then, people didn't really understand the concept that other animals had feelings
and were intelligent and formed bonds with other things. Yeah, so how could
you look at an intelligent, self aware animal and bludge it to death.
To me, that does not make you very different from a psycho serial killer
who kills people because they don't acknowledge that people are living, being creatures with
feelings. I do think you took a little bit of a gap there,
but yes, I see your point. But is it because if you're bludgeting
a defenseless baby wolf in the head, does that not make you a little
bit of a psychopath? Yeah? Nothing, And you're doing it just because
there's a gap there between killing a baby wolf and killing a person. But
you're right. I agree to the principle. Thank you. That's all I
asked. Anyways, we were really successful in killing off wolves because they're pack
oriented, so we were able to group them up. So you can imagine
when people started to go after coyotes and try to exterminate them, they had
a real tough time because not only are coyotes fission fusion animals where they can
just split off and be on their own, and they're very intelligent, they're
very nervous of new things, so if you try to go after them,
once they know it, they respond to extermination by breeding profusely. If they
acknowledge that other coyotes around them are gone, they will respond by having more
pups in their litter the next time. Is that just like a biological thing
where now there are less animals going after the same food source. So now
they're healthier, and now they're reproducing at a higher rate, they're able to
raise more young. Is that kind of how that system works. Yeah,
that's exactly it. They will literally go from having I'm so good, Yeah,
good test you're learning. I'm so proud of you. They will go
from having like four to five or whatever babies to like more than ten pups
in one litter. So when you think that you're trying to eliminate coyotes from
an area, yeah, you might kill a few adults, but they will
go on to breed way more. And because I mentioned their fish and fusion,
they will split off and they will go off farther in separate directions.
So basically what happened is we try to eliminate them from the west. Now
they're up towards the Arctic Circle and they're going towards South America. Wow,
as we didn't realize they were so sensualized to just that part of the country.
I thought they had just always been everywhere no, they were a prairie
species. So like in my my grandma was born in nineteen thirty three or
one of my grandma's I should say, in her lifetime, coyotes have come
over here. Really, isn't that insane? Yeah, that's crazy. Like
I mentioned before, so gray wolves left and messed around in Europe and Asia
for a while and came back. Coyotes, red wolves, the algonquin wolf
they stuck around. So when coyotes come over here, they can breed with
algonquin and red wolves. No shit, yes, oh what does that look
like? Any find a picture of Well, I mean, it's like you
were saying earlier, the wolves we have are Sorry, the coyotes we have
here have wolf DNA in them because they interbreed with the Eastern Canadian wolf and
the red wolves, which are super endangerous. That's cool. Yeah, well
so people who are trying to recover the red wolf, which is super endangered
down south. Kind of the worry there is even if you put more red
wolves in the landscape, the odds of them finding each other are so slim
They're probably gonna find in a coyote first and just mate with that instead.
So you're just gonna get like half red wolf half coyote hybrids that'd still be
cool, Like, I guess it defeats the purpose, but still cool.
Yeah, for sure. And I mean, you know, back when I
did research in college, I was pretty in the middle on how I felt
about the issue. So okay for more context. In some places there are
coyote hunting contests where you get money if you kill the most or the biggest
or whatever. My research was based off of, like why certain people do
that and why people are against it whatever. I'm pretty sure it's open the
season here in New Hampshire, and we don't even have that big of a
population. Like my brother says he only sees a couple of year if he
sees that many. You know, when I lived out in California, I
saw them multiple times a day. I mean it was probably the same group,
same family group, but I saw them all the time. I don't
see I haven't seen a single one since I've been back in New Hampshire.
That being said, ninety percent of the calls I've gotten this week where about
coyotes? Why so many this week? I mean, are my work the
kind of nuisance work? The calls I get about. Certain animals kind of
cycle through the seasons, So when you get more towards winter, it's more
beavers. When it's spring slash summertimes bears, but as the natural food for
bears comes out, kind of switches to coyotes because they had their pups in
the spring. Their pups are getting older, so a lot of people are
interacting now with like adolescent, stupid coyotes pups walking into a neighborhood, not
realizing exactly. So that's kind of why. But that being said, there
are other states currently in twenty twenty one that have bounties for coyotes. I
just that part boggles my mind because it's like, we know now that trying
to kill them off doesn't work. California spends millions and millions of dollars every
year trying to exterminate coyotes and it just doesn't happen. And I think part
of the reason we hate coyotes so much is because they're the one thing we
can't kill off. They are viewed as a pest, is how I see
it. I don't understand why they're just another animal in the forest. In
my opinion, I don't really hear about them killing off. Okay, actually
I do need to talk about this. When I lived in California, within
like two days with each other, I had a good friend and a college
professor who both told me that their pets were eaten by coyotes. And these
weren't people who were just like letting their cats out like this was a guy
who had a Brazilian mastiff to protect his two little yorkies, had a fenced
in yard, had grass like this was a dude who like really took care
of his animals, and kyote jumped the fence grading all yorkies took off.
My college professor his cat just got out on accident one day, like it
sucks, and found her chewed up. It was really rough for him.
But like, if that happened to me, I would also have a real
hate for coyotes. But everything is a part of the food chain, so
unfortunately Kyrie's going to find an easy meal and come grab it. That is
a valid concern one hundred percent that coyotes eat pets, because sometimes they went
they will walk up and rab people's dogs as you are walking themuddle leash.
But that being said, though, I think it's kind of in the similar
vein of what Oliver was saying about cattle who die and then get fed on
by wolves. The wolves get blamed for killing that cattle. And obviously,
in your case, if someone saw coyote take a dog, obviously that's what
happened. And it sucks, but it happens sometimes. But a lot of
the times I think animals just get hit by cars or just get taken,
like a cat could easily get taken by an owl, and it happens all
the time, and then coyotes might just take the body. Keep your cats
inside. I was wondering when we were gonna get into the cat Keep your
Cat five episodes. All right, this is way further than I expected.
Oh, one hundred percent, me too. I could go on about that
forever. Yeah. So when someone calls me they're like, I'm reried about
my cat outside, I'm like, well, keep it inside or supervise it,
like you woul your dog, because why do I have to watch my
dog but you don't have to watch your cat. And it can come in
my yard and kill all the birds. But I die, Chris, So,
yeah, I mean it happens, but I think in a lot of
cases, coyotes can serve as scapegoats for animals dying. But that being said,
they do kill sometimes, they do kill a lot of pets, especially
out west. Like I guess that said earlier. Here, they're not as
prevalence. I don't think it's as much of an issue. So there's people
claiming that we need an open season because of that. I think that's a
little little bit of a stretch. But I do understand people out west,
where there's a lot more of them being more concerned. Well, do you
remember how petros when we were talking about how to like mitigate petator damage,
he talked about the devil you know versus the devil you don't. Yes.
I think that goes a long way for coyotes too. So if you have
a coyote in your yard and it's going after your chickens, or it's hanging
around your pets and it makes you uncomfortable, I think it's way more valid
to teach that specific animal to not do that rather than kill it and wait
for the next thing to come in. Yeah, if you can teach a
young coyote that's going after your stuff, hey, this is really bad and
I'm going to harass you and spray you with pepper spray, or shoot guns
in the air and scear you off. It won't wantn't do that anymore,
but then you could kill it. Then another young one comes in, and
then you kill that another one. But are coyotes as territorial as mountain lions
are. I've never really heard of a coyote trying to defence territory like other
animals. Not necessarily. However, this ties back to our history with coyotes.
Back when the white European settlers were trying to completely eliminate coyotes, they
developed this Those fucking guys exactly, they were mostly guys. Those guys created
this poison called strychnine cool name. Sure. It was essentially this small little
tablet that they put into sarcases of animals that they knew that coyotes were going
to feed on. I mean, honestly, they probably just put it on
anything, I mean, put it up for anything that they could get.
So as soon as the coyotes or whatever poor animal happened to eat this thing,
they would die a horrible death and like do really weird convulsions, foam
whatever, and then just die within minutes. So that being said, how
you were asking about if coyotes are territorial whatever. They are not. However,
they are very intelligent. So because eating that little tablet killed them so
fast, if that coyote that ate that tablet died and there was a coyote
next to it, that coyote learned real quick to never eat one of those
tablets. So they ran into this problem where these other coyotes kept surviving because
they learned not to eat anything that had those tablets in them. So essentially
they were like, well, we made a poison that works too fast.
So do you know what they did? No, a government entity created entirely
and I won't name them. You can read Dan Flor's book Coyote America,
but they created a poison that when the coyotes or once again whatever poor non
target thing ate them, it would take weeks for them to die, but
it would be a grueling few weeks where the pads on their paws would fall
off. Oh man, their fur would fall off. Literally, their skin
would just and this is a terrible word, but I have to use it,
slough off their bodies. What the hell is sluffed? Sluffing is like
I actually think that's gonna work. In the audio podcast, that's a great
way to describe it. And there was one so Dan Flores talks about this
one farmer who he had found. He went into his barn one day and
found a group of coyotes with no fur and no pop heads, huddling in
his barn for warmth. And do you know what he did? I I
would hope shoot them, stab them to death with pitchforks. I would rather
he do that than let them suffer for the next two weeks, I guess,
But I feel like that just goes to show you, like how much
people hated and sometimes still do hate coyotes, and it's I just don't really
get it. I mean, I'm also pretty biased, I guess now,
because I all so just love wolves and predators. But I just I can't
imagine hating an animal so much for just existing that you'd want parts of its
body to fall off slowly. I don't think it's that people hate them.
I think it's that people don't even think about it and don't care. If
you have some random person who doesn't know anything about the poison and they hear
about this, like they hear that they're poison kyries. They don't think about
the actual process of the body destroying itself. They just know that Kayri is
going to be dead and that's fine with them. It's brutal, once again,
a brutal history we have with coyotes, and sometimes it's misplaced. I
mean, in the case of Andrew, the attack he sustained was obviously super
random, and once again people don't really understand why it happened because coyotes in
their nature are unpredictable. I mean I have so. I used to be
an intern at the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center and holder in his New Hampshire.
If you ever come New Hampshire, go check it out. They're easy
accredited. It's essentially like a little zoo, but you're just taking a walk
in the woods and seeing all the animals that live here and also used to
live here because they have mountain lions. But anyways, they have a coyote,
or they have two coyotes, and they have one female who her mother
was hit by a car and killed and she got her little paw run over
and could never be released, so she lives there and she was basically an
ambassador for her species. So I was helping to teach a class of six
year olds that summer, and there was this one girl. I'm not super
a fan of children. I don't know if that's come across yet, not
really good with them. I don't really know what to say to them,
so I was doing a best I basically just talked to them like their little
adults. So this one little girl, she was super ficiy and I was
like, Hey, we're gonna go see a talk with a live coyote.
Sit next to me. Do not move the entire time, please, She
said, okay, So we go sit down. We're in an enclosed room.
Okay, the coyote comes out. She's on a leash, of course,
but they have some little different scent things on the ground for her so
she can show all the other kids around how she sniffs out food and whatever
as they're talking about the coyote's natural history to teach these little kids. So
what is the little girl I told to stay in her seat? Do no?
She jumps down to sit in the seat in front of where her seat
was, and as soon as she moved, that coyote whipped around and snapped
in the air, and that little girl came back to me so fast and
was so scared, and I was like, I told you, they are
unpredictable animals. They are nervous. There is a reason people don't keep coyotes
as pets. It's because they are very nervous, unpredictable animals, and that's
how they survived so long, and that's how they're now in like every major
city in North America. I just think they're cool. They deserve a lot
of respect for how adaptable they are, and I feel like they're really similar
to humans in a lot of ways, and it makes us uncomfortable, honestly,
And also the fact that we can't control them makes us uncomfortable. Yeah,
I think that's a big part of it. Yeah, which is really
unfortunate because if that's how we're gonna value animals based off of how we can
control them, that's not really a good setup for a lot of other animals
in the world. So now I do have a question for you. So
we obviously there are coyote population controls happening. Whether it's an open season,
a bounty, or if they're poisoning, they're going to have these programs.
Do you prefer it as a hunt or as poisoning or trapping or things like
that, because I have my personal opinion that people might not enjoy. I
think the hunting is the most humane way to do it because you have experienced
people who know how to kill things very quickly doing it, as opposed to
the three weeks of poison and suffering that these things go through in the example
you just gave us. Yeah, so I think first and foremost, the
fact that you're still able to buy like rat poison in stores is asinine to
me. Actually is cyodine to me? Get it? You mean cyanide?
Oh fuck? Yeah aha, I did it on purpose. It was a
funny thing. Sure yeah, sure, sure, sure, Le's do it
so good? This episode too comes around eventually. Nope. So the thing
with poison is your average Joe on the street who goes out and buys poison
because they have mice in their house doesn't understand that those mice don't immediately die,
and then other animals like hawks and owls come and eat those and then
also get poisoned. I think poisoning is never, ever, ever the way
to go for any species. I somewhat agree with you about the hunting,
however it goes back to the point I was saying, we're killing one coyote
doesn't do a damn thing to the populations. Are there going to be very
problematic individuals that probably need to be euthanized. Of course, that goes with
every single species you have. If there are coyotes running up and grabbing pets
from people, I don't think they're gonna last very long because that's not a
thing a lot of people, even coyote activists, will tolerate. However,
that being said, I think if you have an issue coyote who's going after
your chickens or something, there are other ways to mitigate that electric fencing,
baiting your electric fence with chicken or bacon or something, so the coyote has
to go up and lick that fence, like we talked about with black bears.
Another great deterrent besides air horns, those are really great for any animal,
just because it's super loud and abrupt. Carry a trash bag with you,
a big black trash bag. Anytime you see one, pop that sucker
in the air like you're about to fill a trash can with it. Because
the sudden noise, yeah, and the presence of something giant black and floating
really scares them, and there's actual scientific evidence to back that that's a more
useful way of harassment. So there are things that you can do to harass
coyotes and live with them safely. Also a thing we should remember, like
we talked about with petros, they're very intelligent and they get very curious.
So I have a lot of people call me and say, hey, I'm
having an issue with coyotes. I put out wolf urine. It's not working,
and I'm like, well, yeah, first of all, these coyotes
a coyote and New Hampshire know what wolf urine is. Thank you. Also,
do you know that it's even wolf urine? You have no idea of
what you're going to buy it from. You buy it, some dude on
the corners scratch in his arm, so you have that. And then it's
like, also, they're curious animals, so what if that draws them in
because they're curious about what it smells like. But yeah, I mean I
think we should do a second coyote episode. What do you think I already
told you? Yeah? Hell yeah, yeah. I have a different story,
a local one that I would like to tell. And then we'll talk
about different aspects of coyotes in that episode, and we will also get into
some disease ecology with a disease that I'm very familiar with, probably the most
familiar with of any of the wildlife diseases, just the one that you dropped
vaccines out of a plane for. Yes, a little bit of a teaser
there for the people. Yeah, that is the thing I've done. So
I flew an airplane once. For a few seconds, you were, Oh
you did at that? Yes, I did. Thank you so much for
coming to episode six. I know we covered so much, and there's so
much there about our history with coyotes that I would love to get into more,
but we only have so much time. So thank you so much for
sticking around. Like I said, if any of this upset you, or
if you want to tell us your opinion and you feel a certain type of
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second grade husband, Josh Walsh for making our intro music. And we will
be back next week with the second part to this episode about coyotes and to
tell you more animal attack stories.