Coyote in Corvallis

I went over tonight, to see if I could intercept the homeless campers, give them some cat food. Sometimes I can find them this time of night, without going into the camps. I came around by where the trail goes in, and saw an animal running along the level of the berry vines. I thought it was a deer.

It then cut out onto the sidewalk and loped along the sidewalk a few feet before cutting across in front of my car. It was a big coyote. This always riles me up, to see a coyote very near where cats are trying to survive. I rolled down my window and yelled at him to get the hell out of here. He was across the road by now and on the edge of the field there, between two city streets.

I turned around and came back to his side. He didn't budge and was waiting to cross back to the camps side and I didn't want him over there at all, fearing for the cats.

I pulled up near him, within 30 feet with my window down, yelled at him again, to get the hell out of here. He just stared at me, like "yeah, big deal, what are you going to do about it?" I took the safety off my bear pepper spray to show him exactly what I was going to do about it, but he ran.

The whole thing was slightly surreal. Cars were going by. It's right in Corvallis. And I'm yelling at a coyote, who is unimpressed and obviously very used to people.

Then two of the campers rode up on bikes. As I was talking to them, a jogger jogged on by, probably completely unaware there was a coyote over in the brush right by where she was jogging along, on the sidewalk. Suppose it's no big deal. They're everywhere.

I told the campers to watch out, that the coyote came right out of their camps, that he might have killed and eaten some of the cats. They had seen coyotes before, said there's a pack of about six of them, in and out of the fields there, and have been for a long time.

They want me to take out the tame older female, said she'd be the one the coyotes would get, if he didn't tonight. That black male, tame, I photographed farther up, a few weeks back, has been in the camps, howling mournfully, Richard said. He's looking for love, only everybodys' fixed now, I told Richard, and he corrected me, saying, "You mean sex, not love. They're different." I said "You're right."

Gosh darn that coyote. Gosh darn it. Those poor cats. Getting eaten by a coyote is about the worst fate you could imagine outside of being eaten by a bobcat. With a cougar, it's quick, but not so quick with a bobcat or with coyotes.

I'm not one of these people who doesn't defend their own. I don't have anything against coyotes, but if something or someone I love is in danger of being eaten by one, I'm going to defend what I love, let me tell you, no ifs, ands or buts about it.

I do not understand people who get cats and let them be eaten by coyotes and act like its nothing. It's like letting your kid play with child molestors and expecting either that nothing will happen or, when it does, they say, "oh well, not our fault, we'll have another kid." That's so fricking asswipe pathetic, makes me barf, when I hear that. What kind of a person is that lame? I would not let my own cats face that sort of danger and that danger, of predators, is everywhere in Oregon, as evidenced tonight, when I encountered that coyote in Corvallis.

I got a bunch of cats fixed for the old vet in Jefferson before he retired. His mom lived on the property and fed some cats, and his mom in law. The mom in law had seen coyotes grab two different cats and run back to the tree line with the cat still in its jaws. There was nothing she could do. Eventually the coyotes killed all the cats she fed.

There have been numerous reports lately in the news of coyotes killing pets in Portland suburbs. In one report, a coyote came through the dog door and took a small dog right out of a laundry room. In Hillsboro, a man stood with his children outside their house and described how a coyote came and snatched and ate, one by one, all the female cats kittens. The coyote emerged from a park across the street I wished the reporter had asked why then he wasn't keeping that poor mother cat, who had survived, inside or getting her spayed. That's idiotic.

In one instance in WA state, a woman engaged in a tug of war with a coyote who came right onto her back porch and grabbed her cat. She was bitten in the process, but said she would not give up, because of the look of complete terror in the eyes of her beloved cat. Her cat was injured badly but survived and the woman had no regrets about fighting the coyote for her cat, although officials sternly reprimanded her, on the news, or anyone doing that, because of the danger.