The Cats and the Coyotes : It’s the civilized equivalent of trapping and killing

A fortnight ago, when the moon was full and the world lay waiting, a pack of coyotes howled in the distance. The sounds of their presence, like the high-pitched harmony of ritual music, came to me on ribbons of melody that unfurled down the canyon corridors. I fell asleep smiling. They were probably eating a cat.

At the risk of further alienating those who love their pets more than life, if I had to chose between cats and coyotes, I would certainly favor the latter.

Cats contribute very little. They do not meow at intruders, they are not especially loyal, they rarely come when called and their howling is sure as hell not melodic. A cat, when it comes right down to it, is very much like a feminist.

I mention this by way of broaching a New Problem on the Valley scene, a little shard of suburban life meant to divert you away from the calamity of greater horrors. Coyotes are moving down the mountainsides.

What this means to those who own furry little kittens or bouncy little puppies and who let them sleep outside at night is that some morning the owners might awaken to find nothing left but heads and paws, which, in most cases, is not enough of the pet to satisfy anyone.

The Department of Animal Regulation reports an increased presence of old Canis latrans in the lowlands bordering the Santa Monica Mountains. Complaints about coyotes have gone up 30% in the past two years.

They are amazingly adaptable animals, switching from canyon to valley without the kind of contemporary traumas that usually accompany the migration of humans from a rural to an urban environment.

They don’t care about schools and they don’t care about quality of life, they simply care about your cat.

Dogs fare a bit better not because they are smarter but because they are usually bigger, and a coyote has more sense than to challenge something it cannot eat with impunity.

In response to complaints, animal control officers are stepping up their efforts to abate the coyote encroachment in the lowlands.

They douse leg-hold traps with the scent of a female coyote. I don’t know where they get it. I don’t want to know.

But not to worry. The traps, we are told, are padded. When they catch a coyote, they no doubt check the animal for injuries and soothe it to calm its fears. Then they kill it.

“They are considered a nuisance in the city,” an animal regulation officer explained.

Of course. And a nuisance must not be tolerated. Get rid of it. Bury it. Forget it.

The theory of nuisance eradication is similar to the proposal Councilman Hal Bernson has offered in dealing with 3,000 Latinos in the Bryant-Vanalden housing project.

The Latinos cause crime. They cause noise. They cause graffiti. About the only social iniquity they are not accused of is eating cats and tipping over garbage cans, and Bernson’s people are probably not too sure of that.

So he wants to move ‘em out to make way for “a better class of tenant.”

It’s the civilized equivalent of trapping and killing.

Santa Monica Police Chief James Keane invoked the Bernson Solution on a lesser scale, remember? He decided that a man booked for indecent exposure had been arrested “one too many times” in Santa Monica.

So he sent him to Miami.

Miami, which does not understand Southern California’s dynamics of crime control, sent him back and threatened to sue.

Chief Keane apologized to Miami. The sex offender is back in town promising to be good. Anything to stay out of Miami.

Councilman Bernson’s proposal does not specify what ought to be done with the Latinos he wants to kick out of the housing project in Northridge. Miami, I suppose, is out. He only knows that he wants their apartments upgraded, which would naturally cause rents to be raised and the current tenants to go someplace else.

When I wrote about this before, an angry woman telephoned and said I had finally revealed my true self. I believed in “coddling criminals.”

Not so. I have never coddled a criminal in my life. If one asked me to coddle him, I would refuse.

The problem in the Bryant-Vanalden project is twofold: No one is bothering to separate the criminals from the non-criminals, and, even if they were, scattering the criminals to the wind is no better than shipping them to Miami.

We are becoming a society of easy solutions. When a coyote becomes a nuisance, we kill him. When a neighborhood becomes a nuisance, we throw out the neighbors.

I explained to the woman on the phone that both methods of dealing with disruptive social conditions leave something to be desired.

“Well,” she hollered before hanging up, “it could be a hell of a lot worse for the Mexicans!”

By her implication, one could argue that at least Bernson’s proposal is humane if not considerate. No one is baiting traps in Northridge.

Not yet, anyhow.