Living with coyotes and other creatures

Like it or not, we live in the midst of wildlife, even in Huntington

Beach. Or wildlife lives in our midst. It depends on how you look at

it. Some of us are thrilled by the wildlife around us, and some are

not. Partly that depends on how you view wildlife, and partly it

depends on how the wildlife is affecting you.

For example, it’s fun to see cute baby skunks parading behind mama

skunk. But it isn’t so nice to smell them. And it really isn’t nice

if your pet tangles with one and then comes into the house.

Raccoons roaming in your yard can be a pleasant sight, but it’s

not pleasant if they eat the koi or goldfish in your pond. It’s

interesting to watch an opossum, but not as interesting if it is

eating all the fruit in your fruit trees or the produce in your

garden. You get the idea.

During pioneer times, people systematically killed wolves,

mountain lions, bears, weasels and any other critter that might eat

something that they wanted to eat. Game animals weren’t safe either.

Pioneers hunted some game animals, such as bison, almost into

oblivion. They hunted others, such as the passenger pigeon, to total

extinction. Times have changed over the last hundred plus years. The

frontier is gone. There isn’t so much wildlife left, and what little

is left is mostly protected.

We think that people should enjoy seeing wildlife in their yards

or neighborhoods. But no matter how you feel about the animals that

visit your neighborhood, it’s against the law to harass or harm them.

It’s also generally against the law to feed them.

Feeding birds in your backyard is OK, but feeding coyotes is

another matter. Some misguided people do feed coyotes, but other

lawbreakers are intentionally setting traps for coyotes.

Coyotes live in Huntington Beach. That is a fact of life. Coyotes

have adapted readily to our urban environment and have found places

to den at Shipley Nature Center, Sully Miller Lake, Bolsa Chica, the

Huntington Wetlands and the Santa Ana River. Pairs of adult coyotes

are raising litters of pups. The pups grow up to become adults, and

in time they have pups of their own.

The world would be overrun with coyotes if there weren’t factors

that keep their population in check. Coyotes get hit by cars, develop

diseases, get parasites and sometimes starve due to illness or

injury. Their life in the wild is short. This is part of the natural

cycle of life, and we shouldn’t interfere with it by feeding them.

Coyotes are crafty hunters and highly adaptable. In the spring and

summer, they eat berries and fruit if they can find them. The rest of

the time, they’ll snack on mice, gophers, ground squirrels, rabbits,

insects and road-kill.

Coyotes are the top predators of our local food chain, and

therefore an important component of our ecosystem. Their occasional

choice of household pets for prey has not endeared them to some

people, but mostly they eat wild prey.

We’ve seen coyote pups at Shipley Nature Center searching for

something to eat, and adults strolling neighborhood streets at night.

A couple of years ago, we saw the red female coyote that dens at

Shipley Nature Center engaged in “mousing.” She peered intently at

the ground, ears perked, then pounced like a cat when she heard a

mouse scurry by. However, such sightings are fairly rare for us.

If we spent as much time at the Bolsa Chica as Mark Bixby does,

we’d probably see coyotes more often. Mark frequently walks the Bolsa

Mesa and environs with his camera, recording sights and deeds (and

sometimes misdeeds). We have Mark to thank for forwarding to us the

picture of a middle-aged woman feeding hot dogs to a skinny coyote.

The woman probably thought she was doing the coyote a favor by

feeding it, but she wasn’t. All she did was teach the coyote to not

respect or fear humans. The less frightened they are of people, the

harder it will be to scare them away. Feeding coyotes is not only a

really bad idea, it’s against the law.

Other people have reacted to coyotes in just the opposite way.

Instead of feeding them, they’ve put food into gallon containers with

narrow openings and left the containers out at Bolsa Chica. The

coyote sticks its narrow nose into the hole in an attempt to retrieve

the food and gets stuck. If it can’t paw the bottle off its nose, it

will starve to death. Maybe that’s the whole idea. Intentionally

harming wildlife is also against the law.

People need to learn to leave wildlife alone. They shouldn’t feed

wildlife, and they certainly shouldn’t attempt to harm wild animals.

Some people are concerned that coyotes are preying on their cats.

Although we can sympathize with the loss of a pet, cats should be

kept indoors. Cats that run loose outdoors kill an inordinate number

of birds, including migratory birds. Maybe coyotes are part of the

balance of nature to keep wandering cats in check so birds have a

better chance of surviving their migratory flight and reproducing

next summer.

Our advice in regard to wildlife is to just let it be.