Singing coyote

Every night for more than a week, I've heard a pack of coyotes barking and howling on the other side of the valley. There have always been coyotes here, as long as we can remember. Lots of open pastures, lots of woods, but the real draw is the nearby creek and all the ponds. There are always geese and ducks near the water, plus chickens and other birds (one of our new neighbors brought several peacocks with him when he moved in; he built an outdoor aviary pretty quickly!).
This pack sounds like it's at the big pond across the road, and it sounds like a really big pack. The first time I heard them, I'd just climbed into bed to read, and had the windows open. The cats usually ignore the sound of a barking dog or the occasional coyote; this big pack freaked them out. James actually stood up and stared toward the windows, and had to be coaxed into relaxing and settling down to sleep.

After midnight, I heard one of them singing solo. It's a treat to hear a coyote sing, sort of a yip-yip that soars up into a howl, and it can go on and on. It's haunting and beautiful to hear.

It got me thinking about all the coyote sightings we've had since we moved here. I wouldn't have thought they'd live so close to suburban areas, but the coyote has adapted really well to fringe rural areas like ours. They've become tolerant of people, wary, but tolerant. I like to walk the back roads near my house, and often see a coyote coming or going between the creek and the open pastures, sometimes boldly trotting down the gravel road in front of me.

They've also adapted to a changing food supply, and people are good at unintentionally providing food for them: garbage cans, leaving pet food outside, and even (sad to say) the pets themselves. Every time I see a sign posted for a missing cat, I just shake my head. I used to let my cats go outside, but finally decided it was too big a risk. Ironically, it was a pair of neglected neighborhood dogs who posed the biggest risk to my cats, not the coyotes. When the dogs started packing, they started killing everything they could catch—cats, geese, ducks, chickens, you name it. But that's a story for another day.

On the positive side, in a world where other natural predators have moved away from people, coyotes can help keep an expanding rodent population under control. And in rural areas, especially where there are horses and cows (not to mention llamas and alpacas), rodents are part of the deal. So we've encouraged barn cats to share the barn by providing food, but built a special shelf high on the wall of the barn, easy for a cat to jump up to, too high for a coyote or dog, and( hopefully) out of the reach of rodents!