He obviously doesn’t know what a coyote looks like

[L.W. Baxter]

or pollero

poy-YE-ro

[L.A Marche]

Fewer cats. Doing god’s work.

Amen

[L.W. Baxter]

cat is the number one method of mouse and rat control on our place. when we moved in, the house and barns were overrun. now i might go 6 months without seeing a mouse. a live one, i mean. cat brings her kills to the doormat, of course.

it takes a few tries to find a cat that can escape the local cat predators long term. coyotes, and, i theorize, the big ass owls. our penny seems to have the knack. now three years old.

[SKIP KILPATRICK]

They arrived in our county about 5-6 years ago. Ken has heard the howls in our neighborhood.

I worry about taking our little dog out at night.

[Dave Wright]

I like them. There's pack that hang out in a deep gully behind our house and sing to us roughly once a week. When we moved to our current town about 12 years ago, we noticed a pack running across a tilled field, maybe a hundred acres in size, running toward a wooded gully. Now that tilled field is full of houses and the human population has increased three fold. The back of our recently built house faces that gully, and I think it's wonderful that the descendants of those coyotes have survived. For the most part those coyotes are very clean and polite neighbors, I wish the feral humans living across the river in Portland were as clean and polite.

Screenshot 2023-03-03 12.55.49 PM.jpg

[JayInOz]

This is the logo for Kioti tractors- On the TV ads here they pronounce it Kee oti- despite the song dog clearly visible on the logo. JayInOz

[JayInOz]

cat is the number one method of mouse and rat control on our place. when we moved in, the house and barns were overrun. now i might go 6 months without seeing a mouse. a live one, i mean. cat brings her kills to the doormat, of course.

it takes a few tries to find a cat that can escape the local cat predators long term. coyotes, and, i theorize, the big ass owls. our penny seems to have the knack. now three years old.

"Loss and others of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that free-ranging domestic cats (mostly unowned) are the top human-caused threat to wildlife in the United States, killing an estimated 1.3 to 3.7 billion birds and 6.3 to 22.3 billion mammals annually."

You're better off putting up with the mice Lee.

[Osborne Russell]

"Loss and others of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that free-ranging domestic cats (mostly unowned) are the top human-caused threat to wildlife in the United States, killing an estimated 1.3 to 3.7 billion birds and 6.3 to 22.3 billion mammals annually."

You're better off putting up with the mice Lee.

How many worms did 3.7 billion birds kill? How many mammals did 22.3 billion mammals kill?

Killing is necessary.

[Dave Hadfield]

OP -- Same dickweeds who shoot a horse thinking it's a moose.

Which BTW, I wish was fiction.

[L.W. Baxter]

well, predator/prey relationships can get unbalanced. but our bird population appears to be very healthy. and they are not fazed by penny taking one now and then. in my observation, she eats almost exclusively juncos and chickadees, which are thick on the ground. not unlike mice with wings, in their apparent reproductive capacities. yard is full of them right now, as a matter of fact.

[JayInOz]

How many worms did 3.7 billion birds kill? How many mammals did 22.3 billion mammals kill?

Killing is necessary.

That's a tough one to answer Osborne, keeping in mind that a large percentage of birds and mammals are vegetarian. I was referring to domestic moggies though, not wild life.

[Garret]

This is the logo for Kioti tractors- On the TV ads here they pronounce it Kee oti- despite the song dog clearly visible on the logo. JayInOz

Kai Oat E around here (& I own one).

[Nicholas Scheuer]

I was in a new patrol when I joined the Boy Scouts and we all put names in a hat for what to call ourselves. My "Coyote Patrol" won the drawing. The one I saw a couple of years ago in our central urban neighborhood looked a lot scruffier than the OP. Our dog could tell the difference from another dog from half a block away.

[Tom Montgomery]

​
The picture in the op and the broad outlines of the story are for real. A woman saw what she thought was a dog on the side of the road with a broken leg. She stopped, picked him up, and put him next to herself in the front seat of her car. The “dog” was docile and lay quietly beside her. When they arrived at the vet she was informed as to what she actually had. The coyote was taken to a wildlife rehab but within a week it died.

https://iheartdogs.com/woman-is-stun...cued-a-coyote/

[Jim Mahan]

Local PBS station aired a piece about coyotes in Chicago. There was a CCTV clip of a coyote patiently waiting for the "WALK" light to come on. They've figured out when it's safe to cross the streets.

It's probably a good thing for us that they haven't evolved thumbs.

[Osborne Russell]

That's a tough one to answer Osborne, keeping in mind that a large percentage of birds and mammals are vegetarian. I was referring to domestic moggies though, not wild life.

As LW says, it's a matter of balance. A place with so many unique creatures as Aus and NZ are special cases. Very strict controls on introduced species such as cats and dogs are necessary. Killing is necessary. Humans must be controlled as well but you can't kill them, for these purposes.

What's a moggy?

[Jack Loudon]

The family's 10-acre place in semi-rural Sonoma County CA has deer, coyotes, bobcats, and the rare mountain lion. My mom grew up there, and said she never saw any of those animals as a child, even though they had livestock and raised chickens during the Depression. I think years ago all these animals would have been shot or trapped, either as pests for for the dinner table.

Now the animals have gotten bolder. The deer eat everything that isn't behind an 8 ft fence. Our neighbor used to raise sheep but gave up because of the coyotes. I haven't noticed a stray cat for years, though they used to be common. As a kids, we had the run of the place from dawn till dusk, but today I might be wary of letting small children out of sight.

[Jim Mahan]

Housing developments and the accompanying strip malls and big box stores take up the real estate range of those critters and they adapt by moving into a mixed a range of open land and suburb. Which is probably why we had that flock of wild turkeys show up on our residential block a couple of years ago. Around twenty at first, toms, hens and younguns, they patrolled the neighborhood daily for most of that year, and the next they manifested as only a few hens and toms, and then, subsequently only a pair of toms, but still more or less daily. And now we haven't seen any at all this past year.

[birlinn]

As LW says, it's a matter of balance. A place with so many unique creatures as Aus and NZ are special cases. Very strict controls on introduced species such as cats and dogs are necessary. Killing is necessary. Humans must be controlled as well but you can't kill them, for these purposes.

What's a moggy?

Felix catus.

[Nicholas Scheuer]

I'm looking for a new dog, but DAMM, if a coyote is smart enough to wait for a "walk" sign, I may opt for one of those instead. They're probably smart enough to realize I'll empty my Browning BPS on them if one messes with my grandkids.

[JayInOz]

[QUOTE=Osborne Russell;

What's a moggy?[/QUOTE]

https://youtu.be/dxUzEFULeyE

[JayInOz]

Kai Oat E around here (& I own one).

Funny thing Garret- the first time I saw the brand I thought that being Korean it was probably pronounced Kee oti, but wondered if the Koreans added the critter and deliberately set up the name to be mis pronounced as a marketing ploy aimed at you guys- their intended target in the market place. Or did I just over think it a lot?

[LOKI]

Had lots of coyotes around when I moved in 6 years ago. Many howls over the years but must say none in the past two years, not sure why, no programs against them. Charley, my Aussie Shepherd , and I were definitely aware of them back then...

[Garret]

Funny thing Garret- the first time I saw the brand I thought that being Korean it was probably pronounced Kee oti, but wondered if the Koreans added the critter and deliberately set up the name to be mis pronounced as a marketing ploy aimed at you guys- their intended target in the market place. Or did I just over think it a lot?

Nope - I think you nailed it.