The Story
Head down, a tawny coyote works over the snow of a lit backyard at night, nosing the ground where the family dogs were just playing with it. The household took it for a wolf.
The evidence is brief: under twenty seconds of night footage, snow pocked with tracks across the yard, and one animal at the edge of the light. By the time the mistake sinks in, the dogs are back inside, growling as if they had seen through it all along. The coyote leaves with their toy pig.
The confusion is easy to settle. A coyote is about one-third the size of a gray wolf and slighter in build, with a longer, narrower muzzle than a dog. The coat runs from blonde to dark tan washed with black, and the legs, ears and cheeks are usually reddish. On the run, a coyote carries its tail down. A dog runs with its tail up, a wolf with its tail straight out.
Coyotes are essentially nocturnal, more active after sunset and at night, and a backyard is no stretch for a species that uses suburban and urban settings as well as forest and grassland. In snow, a coyote walks a meadow listening for small mammals moving underneath, then leaps and dives face first.
What this one meant by the romp is beyond what the footage can show. The figures on risk are plainer. Coyotes are less likely than wolves to form packs, hunting alone, in pairs or in family units, and in a Chicago-area study a third to a half of the coyotes followed each year were solitary. Cats and small to mid-size dogs left out unprotected at night may be killed; Chicago-area newspaper records count 70 attacks on dogs.
The fix is low-tech. Make noise, wave a stick, turn on the hose, and never offer food, so coyotes keep their natural fear of people.
