Is there a coyote in your backyard? Chances are you do share space with these highly adaptable and smart wild relatives of your family dog. You may not have seen them around because coyotes mostly roam their territories at night, looking for food. They eat rabbits, groundhogs, mice, voles, deer, birdseed, unprotected garbage and vegetables from your compost pile. They may even dine on your free-roaming cat or small dog. 

It might un-nerve you to know that coyotes prowl your property as you sleep, but you should not consider them a threat. Rather, think of them as good neighbors. They are just like any other New Hampshire citizen who wants to get a place of his own, find true love and raise a nice family. But, for coyotes to achieve this bliss, they must be social and hook up with other coyotes in the area. And, like many people today, coyotes meet others by creating a MySpace page.
 

No, coyotes don’t open accounts at www.myspace.com to set up a profile. Instead, they pee on trees. A coyote’s MySpace page is the scent post that marks its home range or territory. These posts, which they may “sweeten” with piles of their twisty poo, can be trees, posts, rocks or any other prominent feature that sits at the edge of their territory. Coyote home ranges are quite a bit bigger than a Web page, though, with a core area of two or three square miles and an extended range of about 25 square miles, depending on available resources.

Posting a MySpace page in pee, rather than html, is a smart move in the wild, because many animals rely almost exclusively on their noses to surf the “web of life” and collect information about their environment. If you don’t believe this, just take Rover for a walk past a fire hydrant and watch as he intently “reads” the local canine news. 

It is really too bad that we do not understand the olfactory language of dogs and their kin. With a simple sniff, a great deal could probably be learned about the coyotes in your neighborhood. If you found a coyote scent-post in your backyard and took a big snort, the coyote MySpace page might read like this:

Profile: Eastern Coyote Canis latrans
Display Name: Trickster, from Southwestern Native American folklore
Trickster’s Details
Date Of Birth: sometime after 2004 (life expectancy is about 4 years)
Occupation: hunter, den maker, party animal
City: every one in New Hampshire
Ethnicity: in Northeast, mixture of coyote and Canadian grey wolf
Sign: Taurus (pups are born in early May in New Hampshire)
Body Type: lanky, 30-50 pounds, long legs, thick grey fur, pointy snout, drooping bushy black-tipped tail—about twice as big as western coyotes.
Sexual Orientation: bi, always up for a good hump

Trickster’s Interests
General: howling with friends and family, eating anything, hanging around the den, peeing on things, scaring city folk, chasing red foxes  
Music: “Werewolves of London,” anything by Steppenwolf, also the classics—group howls, yelps and barks
Movies: “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Reservoir Dogs,” “Coyote Ugly”
Books: Not much of a reader. Enjoy gnawing a good mystery.
Heroes: Henry Ford and all of his cars that run over dinner every night. Wile E. Coyote, who someday will kill that smartass Roadrunner and bring glory to coyotes everywhere. And, of course, Oprah
I’d Like To Meet: Slow fat rabbits and a nice bitch that I could spend the rest of my life with and raise a pack.  
About Me: I am not a native. My kind moved to the state around 1944. I enjoy city life, although I avoid crowds. I like to sing. I howl almost every night in the fall and winter to let the ladies know I am available and to warn the fellas to stay clear of my home range. I yelp when I play with the pups and bark when protecting the den or a kill. I feel I am often misunderstood by humans. None of my kind have ever attacked anyone in New Hampshire. Sure, I enjoy an occasional sheep or chicken, but who doesn’t? I am often falsely accused of killing cats. I don’t like red foxes. Hate human hunters, especially the ones who lure us close with fake calls of injured rabbits. Dude, what’s up with that? 

Trickster’s Latest Blog Entry
Narrowly was missed by a Dodge Dakota tonight in Portsmouth. I was on the sent trail of a rabbit and forgot where I was going. Howled at the moon by Pease Airport and ate something sticky. Saw Bruno the German Shepard who hooked up with my sister. Such a jerk going back to his human family and leaving her with four coydogs to raise. I think I am coming down with mange. Just my luck as winter approaches. I am glad that us coyotes moved to New Hampshire. The taxes are low and the trees are tall. Live Free or Die!