ROBERT GARDNER -- The Verdict

The three ultimate survivors are cockroaches, crows and coyotes. Long

after the rest of life has disappeared from this planet, those three will

still be here.

Anyone who has lived in the tropics knows about cockroaches. I don’t

mean the itty-bitty kind the authorities say frequented Sid Soffer’s

steak house. I mean the great big ones, the kind you could put on a horse

and play Lone Ranger with.

Crows I know all too well. They have taken over Shore Cliffs. We used

to have lots of songbirds. Now we have nothing but big, black, noisy

crows.

We’ve always had coyotes, but few people have seen them. They live in

Buck Gully and Morning Canyon and come out only at night and then to grab

a stray cat. They live mainly on ground squirrels, but like a cat every

now and then for a change.

Although we have a decent number of local coyotes, most of them seem

to have migrated south, probably because of all the construction work

being done between Corona del Mar and Emerald Bay. I have a granddaughter

who lives in Emerald Bay, and she has developed almost a siege mentality

about coyotes that show up in her yard every night. She has two cats and

a dog.

The cats are house cats and are not inclined to wander around at

night. The dog, a beautiful female black Labrador, is very protective, as

dogs usually are. When a coyote comes in the yard, that dog takes off in

full voice and chases the coyote away.

So far so good. Bad coyote gets chased away by good dog. However, it’s

not that simple.

People who know about such things have advised my granddaughter to

keep the dog in the house with the cats. It seems that coyotes are not

only a nuisance, they are very smart. They have a routine that goes

something like this:

Coyotes run in packs. The pack sends one member up to the house as a

decoy. The dog comes out and chases the coyote. However, waiting at the

foot of the hill is the rest of the pack. When the dog arrives, they kill

it.

So you don’t have to be a cat lover to hate coyotes. Dog lovers can

hate them, too. Not that coyotes give a damn. Popularity was never very

high on their Christmas list.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge. His

column runs Tuesdays.