By Ken Brafman, Image from Ken Brafman Collection
TITLE: THE COYOTE: MOUNTAIN TRICKSTER: The sight of a coyote crossing the road is a familiar one here in the mountains, as seen in this week’s image. The coyote comes out of the canid family, which evolved in North America up to 5.3 million years ago. They became a distinctive species about a million years ago. Coyote is an old Aztec name that goes back at least a thousand years. It had been taken into the American Southwest with Spanish settlers, who brought Native Americans with them. In mythology, the animal is often referred to as a trickster. When Anglo Americans began arriving in the Southwest in the 1820s-1840s, they began encountering people who called the animal coyote; or as some people pronounced it, kie-ote. The coyote has often been much maligned. Even Mark Twain wrote, “The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede.” Human attacks are very rare. House pets are a more common target. However, in 2008 several small children were attacked in the Lake Arrowhead area. Efforts to eradicate, or at least control, the coyote population came to a head in 1931, when Congress passed a bill that led to the most epic campaign of persecution against any animal in North American history. In a nine-year period between 1947 and 1956, approximately 6.5 million coyotes were killed in the American West, using blanket poisoning. A later campaign in the 1970s resulted in another million killed; but at the end of the effort, it was realized that the population numbers were unchanged. Their preferred diet is rodents, rabbits, fruit, and carrion. Squashed squirrels are special treat. Coyotes have been here for millennia and should be considered a permanent neighbor. They’re our classic totem animal in America and have produced the oldest body of literature in North America in the form of Indian coyote deity stories from 10,000 years ago. To some, the howl of the coyote is our original national anthem.