One month ago, my baby kitty was lost to the indiscriminate fangs of an Orange County sewer wolf (pronounced kay-yo-tay). It was a most traumatizing ordeal, to say the least. After hearing about his unfortunate demise, my wife and I promptly erupted into billowing lava flows of emotional distress. It was a cliche of tortured anguish that would rival any of the door-slamming, ice cream gorging melodrama of modern reality television. What's that Khloe Kardashian? Your laser dimple treatment appointment was cance...MY CAT WAS EATEN ALIVE, YOU WHORE! I'll spare you the snot-dribbled details and simply use the following visual aid to convey our level of sadness:
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| The pain..THE PAIN! |
In the immediate aftermath of the situation, I will admit that I was incensed. I was ready to hop in my car, drive to Orange County from the swamp-ass haven of North Texas, and saddle up with my $9.00 Jeep survival knife for some good, old-fashioned beast wars. I orchestrated elaborately twisted plans for eliminating the neighborhood's coyote menace. All night hunting parties? Check. B.B. Gun sniping posts? Duh. Foiling their carnivorous schemes with the aid of ACME rocket boots? You better believe it. I had every intention of becoming the Darth Vader to the coyotes' Rebel Alliance. But instead of blowing up their home planet with a massive command center (that's no moon), I would see to it that each and every one of those mongrel scavengers at least lost an eyeball.
Of course, I never followed through with my plans for bloody revenge. In fact, I had almost completely forgotten about it. That is until I stumbled upon this rather interesting article in the Orange County register: Full Article Here.
It seems that the lovely citizens of Yorba Linda, none of which appear to have an IQ above 17, banded together and decided to put a stop to their coyote infestation problem...the HARD way. The article states:
"As of Wednesday (7/21), 14 coyotes had been shot and 10
had been trapped and euthanized in Yorba Linda since the
beginning of June...The city is billed $500 for every night
the trapper goes out with his gun. So far the city has paid
$2,500. The trapper uses a special kind of ammunition, goes
out between the hours of 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., and checks in
with the police department before taking any action."
Now, this may not seem like a very scientific diatribe. But, I assure you, it most certainly is. Here's the problem with shooting urban wildlife like so many Middle Eastern civilians: it creates a doubly destructive vacuum in the ecosystem.
Vacuum #1: Since humans have essentially eradicated every comparable predator to the Southern Californian coyote (condors, mountain lions, bears, owls, etc.), there is no other predatory species around to keep rodent and pest populations comfortably low. Coyotes munch on pretty much anything. Rabbits, rats, garbage, squirrels, raccoons, more garbage, fruit, small pets, and even more garbage. Everything is yummers to one of nature's most notorious compulsive eaters. If we spend all our time cappin' coyotes in the muthafuckin' streetlight, we'll be spending a lot more of our time brushing rats off of our bed sheets and coming face to face with rabid trash bandits every time we visit the backyard. What's even more infuriating is the fact that the city's privately contracted pest service, Animal Pest Management, Inc., surely knows this fact. If anything, this $500 a night program of forced removal and genocide will ensure a steady supply of house calls for years to come. Cha-ching!
Vacuum #2: You see, coyotes usually mate between January and March. Like humans and ducks, they mate for life. Their litters, about half a dozen on average, arrive into this world about sixty days later, between the months of April and June. Due to the recent arrival of their absurdly adorable pups, coyote adults spend most of the summer months scrounging for food. After all, it's difficult to feed six babies on a staple diet of half empty Lunchables and clueless house pets. The recent uptick in coyote "attacks" is really just a desperate push by nature's newest mommies to feed their starving young. Nothing is more essential than the continued selection of successful gene carriers. When a rival predator ("pest control") comes in and starts Tony Montana-ing every twenty-pound canine in a ten-mile radius, nature starts to compensate.
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| YOU CACA-ROACH! |
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| Get a room, you god damn coyotes... |
I could spend the majority of this post describing the different ways in which man's blind settlement of wild ecosystems has greatly exacerbated the coyote dilemma. I could go on to say that the introduction of large pet canines into coyote habitats has nurtured an alarming trend of coyote hybridization (they not only eat our pets; they mate with them, too!). I could go on to say that coyotes mainly congregate around neighborhoods with poor waste management skills and even poorer wildlife interaction skills. I could also go on to say that most of the habitable ecosystems for Southern California's coyote population have been ravaged by arson and consumed by man-made wildfires (FLAMES!). I'm sure none of this matters to the residents of Yorba Linda, though.
Coyotes are a native species. They proliferated in the Orange County area long before any human settlers arrived. Still, I'm sure the argument that "they were here first" makes little difference to someone with the gumption to spend four hours a night slaughtering one of nature's most clever predators just to keep Bootsy safe for another day of laziness. As Rita Silva-Leu, a proud member of Yorba Linda's virtuous rabble says, "Why do I have to be afraid? This coexistence thing, I don't think it can happen. We love animals, but when it's them or us, it's not going to be them." Too true, Ms. Leu. Too true.
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| Hey, Ma! Get a pitcher of me in front of all these bison heads! |
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