Last fall, I was conversing with a longtime Silverton proprietor, and our conversation turned to coyotes. I don’t recall why we went there, but we did and more specifically, to the apparent absence thereof.
Turns out, he told me, a certain Silverton resident had taken it upon himself (gender disclosed, name and occupation withheld) to rid the greater Silverton area of its coyote population. To date, his kill count was upwards of 70 coyotes, he had bragged to the proprietor (I did not ask for time-frame clarification, but it came across as somewhat limited). The coyote killer told the proprietor of his hatred for coyotes, that he wanted to see them gone from our topography and that he also had been selling the pelts (hatred apparently not preventing him from financially benefiting from the sales).
The Silverton proprietor concluded that he missed hearing the coyotes sing, that it made him sad that so many had been killed.
On Christmas Eve, I walked down the road to a neighbor’s gathering. There I started up a conversation with another neighbor (we are all neighbors in Silverton, after all), and somehow our conversation turned to coyotes, how he wasn’t hearing them much anymore and that he missed their presence. I told him of the resident coyote killer and that he surely could count on an increase in the number of marmots and various other rodents found in his woodpile during the fair months. And I already knew firsthand how much he hated marmots in his woodpile!
Simple fact: Coyotes help control rodent populations – in a big way. Nature’s checks and balances.
Another neighbor and I were having a sit-a-spell in the too-dang-warm January sun. She lamented about not having heard the Silverton coyotes sing in a long time and that she missed them terribly. I shared with her what I had learned about our local coyote killer, and she became distraught. Reality often is a bitter pill.
A while back, I lived in far northwest Montana, snuggled in betwixt the Cabinet Mountains and the Clark Fork River. I lived in an old log cabin plunked into a stretch of breathtakingly gorgeous inland rain forest. Every day, I watched myriad wildlife activity right outside the old creaking door, sometimes right there on the splintered porch. Like the time I awoke at 4 a.m. to a gangly, young moose literally tap-dancing on the porch’s weathered wood (“Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal. ... ”)
During my time in northwest Montana, I watched – and sometimes this was face-to-face, awfully-close-for-comfort watching – black and grizzly bear, cougar and coyote, elk, moose and deer, fisher and pica. I listened to a particular wolf pack sing in the wee hours. Heaven!
But I will tell you what, around those parts folks are really into killing things.
I did a little substitute teaching at the all-ages schoolhouse the next town over, and I quickly grew weary of listening to kids talk about killing critters. Talk of shooting crows just to watch other crows land and scavenge the dead crows, and then shooting those crows, too. During rifle season, talk of trying to give away an animal they had just shot because their freezer already was full. Talk of not being able to give away the meat because everybody’s freezers already seemed to be full. And yet folks just kept right on killing things. “Late season tags,” aka poaching, were big there, too.
At this point, these folks were not trying to feed their families; they were bored and didn’t know what else to do. Here, hiking the phenomenally scenic trails and majestic mountains without a gun and without the sole purpose of killing something is unthinkable.
After my wolfish-looking dog, Wolfgang (a white shepherd-husky mix) was nearly shot on three separate occasions for looking wolfish while hiking in the national forest with me, I knew I needed to leave while we were both still intact: too much intent on killing.
And now, don’t even get me started on New Mexico’s recent coyote-killing contests: cruel and unconscionable.
I don’t feel this way about Silverton and San Juan County. Thankfully, I haven’t experienced that same culture of killing for killing’s sake, and I want to believe it doesn’t exist here. Legally and ethically, taking an ungulate for meat and participating in the entire, often arduous process should be celebrated. It certainly bests the misery inflicted on factory-farmed animals. But taking it upon yourself to wipe out an area’s population of coyotes (in this case) just because you like to see them die and want them gone? No!
Killing coyotes is not an act borne of duty or heroism; it is senseless and cruel and selfish. It is an act that neither benefits a balanced San Juan ecosystem nor the soul of Silverton, nor anywhere else for that matter. Coyotes play an important role in supporting healthy ecosystems, and their haunting yodels accompany our dreams.
Last night, I looked out into a darkness lit from a nearby streetlight and a waning moon. I looked out just in time to watch as a coyote darted off into a nearby snowdrift. This morning, as I walked my dogs, I listened to coyotes yodel. I stopped and yodeled back. I watched as one coyote and then a second, moved off cautiously into the beyond. They sometimes slowed and posed as shadows, other times as things ancient and mysterious. I had neither seen nor heard coyotes in Silverton for a long time; these sightings felt like a sign.
“Stay safe! Live long!” I called out to them, remaining in place and watching until, like ghosts, they vanished.
Tricia M. Cook writes from Silverton in the company of two big dogs, two small cats and the hopeful songs from coyotes remaining.
