Happy Veterans’ Day to all veterans. We owe our nation’s security to your service.
In July, we moved from northwestern Pennsylvania to southern California. In Pennsylvania, we lived on the edge of a forest, so we had continuous visitation from wildlife, mostly deer, but also turkey and an occasional fox. Now in California, we live at the edge of a small town. In fact, the fence defining the eastern border to Camp Pendleton is visible from our deck. Camp Pendleton, a Marine base, is a vast area of undeveloped land (if it weren’t for Camp Pendleton, the southern California coast would be developed from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border), which means there’s plenty of wildlife back there. As you might imagine, though, the wildlife is quite different from what it was in Pennsylvania.
From the first night in our new house, we heard the coyotes howl. We don’t hear them howl every night—though we certainly sleep though some (most?) of it—but they can make their presence known when they want to.
There are coyotes in Pennsylvania too, but they are much rarer and more discreet. Only rarely did we see evidence of them on our property, but we never heard them howl.
Occasionally, we have seen a coyote traversing our property in the mornings. One early morning, to our great surprise, a coyote (the same one, perhaps?) was standing on our back deck and looking at us through the glass door, just 10 feet from where we were standing. A couple weeks ago, as we were having lunch on the deck with guests, a coyote strolled through the back yard in broad daylight. Around here, they’re cheeky.
The good thing about having coyotes around is that they are predators for certain pests. When we moved in, there were many gopher holes in the lawn, but no actual gophers. Presumably, the coyotes ate them. The bad thing about coyotes is that they can also serve as predators for small pets; you don’t want to leave such pets outdoors at night.
Hubby has decided to make war with the local ground squirrels, which are quite destructive. He bought a squirrel trap for that purpose. Our next door neighbor gave an account of his trying to trap ground squirrels in the past. He said he bought a trap for a ground squirrel and set it. The next day, it was nowhere to be found. He bought another trap and set it, but this time, he chained it to a tree. The next morning, he found the trap severely banged up with a traumatized squirrel trapped in it. It was the coyotes.
Hubby went and bought a new ground squirrel trap and set it a couple nights ago near a squirrel hole he had found. He didn’t secure it in any way. Sure enough, the next day, the trap was gone. So was the squirrel. What remained were piles of feces near where the cage was, as well as evidence of digging, scratching, and dragging by dog-like creatures. We could see further evidence of this type across the yard leading to the back of the property and beyond. There is a breach in the fence at the back of the property which the coyotes clearly use to get around. Looking through the fence, I saw… the squirrel trap! I went through the breach to recover the trap. Looking at it closely, it became clear that this trap was not the one hubby bought—it must have been the trap our neighbor lost to the coyotes in years past! (He didn’t want it back.) I tried following the trail of the coyotes dragging the new trap as far as i could, but it just disappeared.
Being so close to such aggressive and plentiful predators is new to me. I’m not worried about being attacked—humans are a lot larger than their typical prey—but they are clearly capable of much destruction. Hubby found it frustrating to find strategies to prevent the deer in Pennsylvania from eating all his plants, without much success. It remains to be seen what challenges the coyotes and other local wildlife will offer here in California.
I’ll close with a live recording of Joni Mitchell performing her song “Coyote,” accompanied by Pat Metheny (lead guitar), Don Alias (congas), and the incomparable Jaco Pastorius on bass. (Tragically, Pastorius died at the age of 35.)
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