Daily Archives: 18 January 2008

Coyotes, Up Close and Personal

18 Friday Jan 2008

Posted by in wildlife

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Thursday evening around 6pm I was walking my 2 dogs. One of our routes has a section that goes along the edge of the Yavapai reservation. I have often seen wildlife in this area, including coyotes (the canid kind, not the human smugglers). On this occasion I heard many coyotes yipping, they were on the reservation land which is in its natural state. Cool, this is nothing new but they did seem to be very close.

We crested a hill and 4 coyotes stepped out from the brush. They stared at us, showing no fear of the human (me, but then again I am not very intimidating). My lab knows what they are and is afraid of them, she started pulling me back down the hill. My rat terrier knew they were not dogs, she did not bark and growl like she does at other dogs. At 20 pounds she is a good size for a coyote’s dinner. I started walking backwards, slowly while they continued to watch us. On the rest of the walk I looked over my shoulder very often until we got to busy street.

Too bad I had no camera.