“As the stories seem to ask, how can one not see the Coyote impulse writ large in humanity?” Flores asks.

Through Coyote, native culture related the lessons of human nature to generations who didn’t need an advanced degree to obtain a lick of good sense. One part jester, one part trickster, the coyote’s role as a kind of liaison between the natural and so-called civilized world. “He is a god who is not merely good, but also, transparently, very, very bad.”įlores relates hilarious and even racy Native American coyote stories to illustrate the animal’s indelible and essential place in Indian lore. “Fascinating to me, unlike a perfect deity - such as Carl Jung’s ‘savior’ figure or a Jesus who teaches a codified morality and sets himself up as a role model to humans striving for godlike perfection - Coyote personifies the whole suite of human traits,” Flores writes. Stories and songs featuring it in many roles are featured throughout native religion and lore. In Native American culture, Coyote is a deity for all time. It was labeled “the arch-predator of our time.” With wolves essentially out of the picture by the 1920s, ranchers began blaming it for stock losses and the Animal Damage Control Act of 1931 put the coyote in the crosshairs. The use of deadly Compound 1080, Flores writes, “produced a classic poison overreach, almost wiping the giant California condors off the planet.”Ĭoyotes were long ago classified as “varmints” in many states, meaning they were pests that could be killed at any time for any reason. Costly attempts by the federal government (many millions of taxpayer dollars spent by the Division of Wildlife Services in large part as a gift to the sheep industry) have produced prodigious slaughter, but the coyote has managed to win the war by moving and, when necessary, breeding prolifically.Įfforts to poison them have for decades littered the landscape with toxic carcasses.

Had settlers paid more attention, Flores argues, they would have saved themselves and the coyotes a lot of trouble. While wolves were no match for guns and traps and were brought to the brink of extinction, little brother proved harder to kill. That skill came in handy once wolf-wary European settlers began their migration to the West in the 1800s. It was long ago bullied into the shadows by its big brother, the gray wolf, and forced to adapt. That, Flores said in a recent interview, may be as much a matter of politics and marketing as environmental awareness. Why haven’t more people rooted for its survival? There’s also evidence coyotes have hybridized with wolves and dogs in the South and Northeast.

These days it is as at home in Chicago as the Cubs and, Flores writes, is believed to be colonizing the suburbs. Indefatigable and adaptable, the coyote not only has survived all attempts to eliminate it from the landscape, but it has actually managed to greatly expand its range: From the deserts of the West to the streets of New York.

The film offered, as Disney himself said, “the coyote’s side of the story,” which is an amazing and true tale of resilience and surprising prosperity in the face of more than a century of attempts at extermination.

Compound 1080 coyote