Random thoughts while looking out the kitchen window at daybreak…
Two coyotes trot across the road and disappear into the grass. What mischief have they been up to? No way to tell. But my rabbits are gone, and their presence comforted me by remembering what they meant to me in my boyhood, and I blame coyotes for the loss.
When I was a boy, the last few rounds of the mowing machine would flush a dozen or more rabbits, in every field. A few years back, I was on the last few laps and knew there was one rabbit in the field. I completed the turn at the end of the field, looked at the final swath, saw a coyote trot in the hay — and emerge, carrying the last rabbit in his bloody mouth.
In 1948, I contracted pneumonia. We’d bred for the Easter market and in February had 102 lambs on the ground and 15 ewes to go.
For several days I floated with the angels. But there was this new medication called penicillin, experimental at the time. It worked, but by the time I got back to take care of my sheep, lot them at night; it was too late.
Lamb carcasses littered the pasture — the very pasture where I so recently saw the coyotes trotting as if they owned it. Tearfully, I counted the remaining lamb crop. There were only 35 lambs left alive.
Thus, I have hated coyotes with a passion ever since and have made life as uncomfortable for them as possible. I have had many heated arguments with coyote lovers but they think coyotes are glorious and little lambs have no right to exist except to provide food for carnivores.
The Department of Conservation kindly sent out a trapper to show me how to catch them. But I found out coyotes are better at avoiding traps than I am setting them. So I reluctantly gave up the sheep.
I devour each sheep story the OFN reporters come up with, and vicariously share their joy with their flocks, the pleasure and learning experiences they have with their children. I wish I knew their secrets of keeping these precious animals alive and well.
I have heard burros or llamas are good guards for sheep. Or Great Pyrenees dogs. Anyone has the answer, let me know.
Meanwhile, my pointer bird dog hobbles around on three legs. A coyote dashed out of the brush and scared her into running under the tractor. I could not stop. Her left leg had to be amputated.
And Helen’s pet Cocker Spaniel bears scars on either side of her hips where a coyote grabbed her as prey before I interrupted the meal.
I was brush-hogging at the time in an adjacent pasture where the pet dog was digging moles. Suddenly, in the next pasture, I saw two coyotes streaking in V-formation down the slope. They were on a bee-line for the dog, no doubt about that. Before the dog was even aware she was under attack, the coyotes were upon her.
Only by the rattle and the roar of the tractor — and my high-pitched screaming — did the coyotes abandon their prey.
I subsequently read a two-part story on coyotes in an outdoor magazine, warning of the misplaced sympathy people have for coyotes. The story told of how coyotes can stalk their prey for days, even hide within a few feet of where children are playing. And how, once they have selected their prey, they often work in pairs, locking in radar-like as a team, ruthlessly seizing the innocent victim neatly dispatching it with needle-like teeth right behind the ears.
To me, the only good coyote is a dead coyote. It is only a matter of time before an innocent child is attacked, killed or carried away into the woods by one of those “quaint, cute little doggies” over which nature lovers slobber.
In my home town of Willard, Mo., an abandoned Frisco railroad right of way was taken over 30 years ago and turned into a walking trail. Thick brush has grown up on either side of the so-called trail. Frequently, lone walkers use the trail.
So far, so good. But it also happens there are three church day-care centers adjacent to the trail and on nice days, you may see some 25 or more children walking on the trail, guarded, of course, by adults.
But it also would be easy for a hungry coyote to dash among the children, nab an innocent child in his teeth, and dash into the brush before it could be stopped.
Even if a child was not killed or mauled seriously, the child and other children would never get over the fright.
It may be nice to hear calls of the wild at night when you are safe at home. But face it. They are potential killers of dogs, cats and other pets — and are known to have killed small children.
There is nothing romantic about coyotes. In fact, the reason I brought up the subject was because my daughter, Connie, just gave me an authenticated report of a coyote killing a child in California, and dragging it into the brush.
There is 30 miles of abandoned railroad track between Willard and Bolivar.
Beware.
