Where the wild things are

As coyotes move into suburbia, they conjure mixed emotions. Some people con- sider them a threat. Others are willing to coexist. Numi Mitchell wants to find ways to manage them and improve their public relations.

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Rhody Coyote's yellow eyes are in constant motion, looking at Spencer Tripp, the trapper who is holding him down by the neck with a critter-control pole, then at Ralph Pratt, the veterinarian who is preparing to stick him with a hypo, then at Numi Mitchell, the scientist with a camera and a notebook. His bushy tail is clamped tight against his skinny butt, one toe of his right forepaw is caught in the firm rubber jaws of a trap, he’s not moving a muscle, but those yellow eyes are taking it all in, with a look of deep despair. There’s no fierce snarl, no gleam of defiance. When Mitchell squats down and grasps him by the back of the neck, the jaws gape in protest, showing strong, brutal white fangs, but the eyes have a faraway look, as if he’s prepared to see this familiar world—the spring trees, the blue morning sky, the damp, thick woods—give way to the next one.

Mitchell and Pratt work gently and efficiently to sedate him, free his foot from the trap, place a microchip under the skin at his shoulder, draw a blood sample, measure all his parts (ears, tail, nose to rump, shoulder to toe), hoist him in a net to check his weight (forty-four pounds), assign him a name, and secure a cus-tom-made high-tech radio collar around his neck. He’s about to become part of Mitchell’s study of coyote behavior on Aquidneck Island.

Coyotes began to appear in Rhode Island sometime in the late 1960s, says Charles Brown, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Environmental Management.  Brown works at the Great Swamp Field Headquarters at the end of a ragged dirt road in South Kingstown. Bullfrogs croak in the pond outside, and in Brown’s tiny office, dusty shelves hold bones and skulls of foxes and beavers, a stuffed bobcat prowls on top of a filing cabinet, and two luxurious coyote pelts hang on a hook by the door. It’s his job to keep track of the state’s mammals.

“Historically, coyotes weren’t native to New England,” he says. “Their niche, as a top canine predator, was occupied by wolves. When the region was settled by Europeans, the forests were cleared for agriculture and firewood, and the wolves were hunted down and driven away.” By the 1960s, farms were reverting to forest. But this new forest was tangled with undergrowth, fractured by roads, sprinkled with houses—not a habitat enticing to wolves. To coyotes, it was an open invitation. With no wolves to drive them away, they started to expand their range from their native Midwest region. Coyotes now are found coast to coast in North America.
Rural Rhode Islanders were the first to spot coyotes slinking along roadsides or scouting the edges of backyards, but they have gradually spread to just about every corner of the state, except Block Island. They provoke mixed reactions. Some welcome them as wild neighbors, interesting to watch and maybe good for the balance of nature. But many see them as unnatural, a nuisance, or even a threat. They worry that the coyotes will spread rabies, plunder trash cans, eat their pets and attack their children.

Brown debunks all of those concerns, except for the danger to pets. “A small dog or a cat is simply prey to a coyote,” he says. “People just have to learn not to let them out at night.” If trash is properly stowed and hard to get at, the coyotes won’t bother with it, he says. No cases of rabies have been found in the local population. “The type of rabies found in the Northeast is much more likely to infect raccoons,” he says.

There are few documented attacks by coyotes against humans, even children, and those that do occur are generally prompted by people trying to interact with or feed the coyotes. “Don’t approach them, and you won’t have any problems,” Brown says. Compared to attacks on humans by domestic dogs, which number in the thousands every year, coyotes aren’t even in the ballpark.

But relations between people and coyotes here are still new, and the protocols aren’t yet familiar, especially to urban dwellers. Questions arise about how many coyotes can be supported here. “How many coyotes can live in Rhode Island is really more of a cultural question than a biological one,” says Brown. “For some people, or in some places, like maybe Bellevue Avenue in Newport, one might be too many. But it’s funny...people will call us and say, ‘We hate that coyote, it’s dangerous, please get rid of it!’ But then they’ll turn around and say, ‘Wait, you’re not going to kill it, are you?’ ”