The Coyote Thread

This thread is for all things coyote related. Where you can go to get your coyote fix.

I'll start with this video of a coyote viciously mauling playing with a Canadian:

How do you guys pronounce Coyote anyway? I've heard a million variations.

Kai-Yo-Tee.

Kai-yoat

That.

We had a pack of them living in the field behind our house once, and when word got out it seemed like half the county wanted to stake them out hoping to score a kill.

Kai-Yo-Tee.

So that's what they look like...

Kai-yo-tee.

Hehehe.

Kai-oat.

Coyotes are fun.

Either is fine.

We saw coyotes in our back yard at our old house. They were pretty.

I'm pretty sure Blackdog was part coyote. She had the shape of one.

There's a pack of them that roams the area I live. They were picking off calves for a while until the farmers put some donkeys into the fields with them [apparently they like to curbstomp 'em].

Used to see them near my grandma's place all the time. They still show up in the park now and then.

The Daily Coyote. Great blog, primarily wonderful pictures.

edited 31st Jan '12 11:04:30 PM by Madrugada

I saw one in October while walking my dogs. Despite being well aware they've been spotted in the suburbs of Chicago it still caught me by surprise (mostly because I'd lived in an area with tons of them for a while and had never once actually seen one). It bolted when it saw me (and my 2 dogs, one of which looks a lot like a black wolf).

Where I'm from, we don't have coyotes. And we pronounce it coh-yoh-te.

There’s one park I frequent where I see them all the time. One day I couldn’t figure out why the ground squirrels were freaking out until I saw one wandering around. Another time I thought I’d see tragedy as I saw a man walking his dog off-leash as a coyote was lurking around mere feet away, unseen in a brush-covered gully, but nothing happened.

Soundtrack for this post:

Weirdly, I pronounce it kai-yo-tee when singular, and Kai-yoats when plural.

The Cherokee have a really interesting belief in the Coyote (I think Cherokee? Maybe another tribe, sorry in advance). They believe that if Coyote crosses your path first, you're fine, but if you cross in front of Coyote, you bring bad luck on yourself. Also if you do things like decorate your truck with Coyote's name—Coyote doesn't like to be mocked.

Couple of cool stories involving this. I moved out to CA from SC when I was 13—Coyote crossed the road in front of us when we crossed the border from Nevada. Moving to CA was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

My anthropology teacher in college (so I'd been in CA for 7 years before I heard this) told me about the Coyote beliefs. She lived with a tribe for a long time. About halfway through her time with the tribe, she was offered a great position in Texas—tenure, good pay, research grants and all of that. So she left the tribe to pursue the job. on the way out of the reservation, she noticed a coyote sitting on a hill, watching the road. Belief was engrained by then, so she pulled over to let Coyote cross.

Only, Coyote wouldn't cross. He sat and watched her. She was on a schedule, had to be in town by evening to catch her plane. Coyote still wouldn't cross. So she crossed Coyote.

She said it was the worst job she ever took. She quit six months later and went back to the reservation.

Coyote: an excellent novel and series of sci-fi books by Allen Steele.

(I was looking for a discussion of it, just completed the last of the five Coyote books, Coyote Destiny. Am starting on the spinoff books based in that universe (but not on the planet-sized moon Coyote in the 47 Ursae Majoris system), with Spindrift, once it's delivered.)

edited 19th Oct '13 4:44:56 AM by WeAreAllKosh