Re: Backyard Wildlife

Bobbi,
Yes, I have a lot of coyotes in my area.  In fact, this summer I had an
unusual encounter with one.  My dog and I were gardening in the far corner of
the yard and we looked up to find one looking at us from about 30' away.  It
seemed to be a young one, about six months old, who wanted to play with my
dog.  My dog chased it away, but it would only go about 50' away and would
keep coming back to us.  This game of chase went on for about 15 minutes.  We
saw him again on another day, but my dog chased him away again.

I love having coyotes.  They keep the deer on the run and the population
down, they especially keep the rabbit and racoon population down.  We have
seen them in our yard on occasion and you can hear them howling in the woods
many early mornings.   I have never heard the farmers complain about them,
but I do know there is a bounty on them because last year in our newspaper
there was a color picture of the carcasses of 17 of them that had been killed
for "sport" in our area.  I don't know if it was coincidence or not, but I
had the worst rabbit and deer problems this year.

I really feel these are important preditors, they seem efficient on
small/med. animals, they don't threaten man, they are shy of man and don't
cause problems with getting into the trash, etc.  There will probably be
someone with a different feeling on this, but from my experience, we need
them.
Kay Dye

In a message dated 9/29/00 10:51:23 AM Central Daylight Time,
diehlr@INDIANA.EDU writes:

<< Speaking of which, coyotes are making an appearance in our part of the
 world. What is their role in terms of harm/help to the gardener? Does
 anyone have any experience with coyotes?
  >>
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