Steve Merlo: 'Desert dogs' out of control in city limits
| Thursday, Nov 05 2009 05:18 PM
Last Updated Thursday, Nov 05 2009 05:18 PM
The tone of voice in my wife's cellular call suggested something had gone awry while she walked our two dogs on the bike path south of Stockdale and Allen Road.
"They're after us again, and this time they're really close!" she exclaimed, then stopped talking to me and yelled "Get Away! Go on! Skat!"
In the background I could hear barking, but I knew the yips and yaps were not from ours or any other dog. "They won't leave and I''m scared," she added frantically. "They just keep getting closer and closer and I think they're going to attack the dogs. Or me..."
My hasty arrival ended the standoff. Seeing the pickup turn off and toward them, the three brazen coyotes raced for cover -- their cowardice a learned response when confronted by vehicles. I shudder to think what would have happened had she had to continue dealing with the out-of-control predators. Because strict laws forbade her from carrying a weapon within the city, she had nothing with her to fight off the half-crazed animals to protect herself and our dogs.
I know other locals have had the same scary problem, but not one city official seems to be alarmed, and the coyotes just keep getting closer and closer to provoking a real life incident.
An adage claims that the last creatures to exist upon the earth will be the rat, cockroach and coyote, because all three have the tenacity to make a living and multiply in places where no other life form can.
Two of these creatures, the roach and the rat, spend their entire lives surrounded in filth caused by humans and carry a wide variety of easily communicable diseases, including plague. While the occasional coyote can carry the dreaded rabies virus, for the most part they are clean as a dog and spend their lives in a never-ending search for their next meal. If ever there was an animal that can be construed as being "smart" or "intelligent," the coyote comes as close to ranking at the top of the heap.
While growing up in Buttonwillow, I often heard coyotes yipping and yowling at night, but actually seeing one in the daytime was something else altogether. I had examined several road kills over the years, and Daryl Tracy once showed me a dead one the government trapper had taken, but that was it. Coyotes stayed away from town and made their mark in the desert, and that was the way it was supposed to be.
When they did make the mistake of showing their hides during daylight, a high-powered rifle or even a .22 rimfire would quickly guarantee them a permanent spot hanging on the nearest barbwire fence.
Back then, there was a bounty on coyotes, and therefore there were not a lot of them nosing indiscriminately around the county. Oh, sure, sheep- and cattlemen had their share of problems, but by and large, it was the early 1970s before I saw their numbers skyrocket out of control. By 1978, I was carrying my trusty .270 to and from work in Lost Hills, and rare was the week that I did not put the kibosh on two or three after pulling over to the side of Interstate 5 and whacking them while propped on the perimeter fence.
Back then, traffic was extremely light, but I finally had to curtail my shooting activities when television aired the ridiculously offensive and outlandish "Sniper on Interstate 5" program.
Though most of the few CHP guys covering the route were my friends and often stopped to watch me pot a coyote, I didn't want to put them in a bad situation should someone complain of a real sniper in their midst.
And the patrolmen didn't want some do-gooder to pot me either, because, I'm sure, of the paperwork it would have generated.
Anyway, by the mid '90s, coyotes were completely out of hand and were starting to infiltrate the city limits of many munincipalities where their natural affinity for working the edges of towns paid off. No longer satisfied with an occasional tough-eating jackrabbit or squirrel, the "coydogs"discovered that growing fat and sassy at the expense of people's naive dogs and cats was a lot easier than foraging in the harsh desert.
Added to the fact that most communities had "no shooting" boundaries in place, the wild mini-dogs soon lost their natural fear of humans and began showing themselves even after the sun came up.
These "closed to all hunting" areas actually became safe havens for the unusually cunning and sly coyotes, and their numbers have exploded across North America.
Recently, for instance, a woman in Nova Scotia, a Canadian province not naturally a home to coyotes, was killed by two of the ferocious animals.
Our local coyotes have also gotten out of hand, as evidenced by the beginning of this column, and I would like to know how many people have had recent conflicts with the pesky predators.
Concerned individuals can contact the Department of Fish and Game if they have or have seen a coyote problem.
