Fitness Files: Running with the coyotes

During a 6:45 a.m. run, as I gained mileage by snaking through neighborhood alleys, I spotted a canine 50 yards ahead of me, no owner in sight.

I save dogs, calling the number on the collar or the dog catcher.

“Come,” I commanded. The mid-sized, golden four-legger looked back and trotted away.

“No catching this one,” I judged as I slowed to a walk. I never chase stray dogs. They’re faster, and running toward them causes them to bolt, maybe into traffic.

So I redirected. “Go home!” Another over-the-shoulder look as the yellow-brown canine turned a corner.

I came to the corner.

No dog, but I saw a coyote, standing beside a concrete block wall. In a millisecond, it levitated straight up to the top of the wall and glanced back. I’ve seen cats leap up and achieve a soft landing several feet above, but never a member of the canine family. It did not scramble up the wall.

In an awe-inspiring spring — effortless to my eye — the coyote transformed from standing on earth to topping a 6-foot wall, perfectly balanced. I’m still replaying the instant, in appreciation of this acrobat of the wild.

I was so dazzled by the gravity-defying coyote that I sprinted home to report excitedly to my husband — who likes coyotes but not emotional females. He told me to relax.

When I hit a communication wall, I talk to you, my readers.

Our backyard is the day-time home of two chihuahuas. My husband found the mother, and we kept one of her four pups.

“Are you protecting Stella and Blanche?” my friend Mare asks frequently, directing her big blue eyes my way. “Just spotted another coyote by your house.”

“We’re fenced, Mare, don’t worry!”

On this particular morning, I told my husband, “Our fence is nothing to a coyote.”

Still, I would not lift a finger against this wild creature. In the ‘90’s, I heard that UCI researchers studied an ancient coyote pack that disbursed when the housing tracts were built on the Castaways and across the Back Bay. I think displaced remnants of that pack migrated to our neighborhood.

But there’s another mammal population inhabiting my environs. Gassing up my car one evening on 17th Street, I looked up. Emerging from a palm tree, a rat parade ran across power lines.

According to urbancoyoteproject.com. “Rodents are the primary food source for coyotes in rural and urban areas alike … studies show an increase in the rodent population when coyotes are removed. Scat analysis of urban coyotes show rodent consumption 42%, fruit 23%, deer 22%, and rabbit 18%.”

In their natural habitat, coyotes keep the insect population down. They hunt reptiles. They consume road kill.

Rat control is important, but my sense of fairness says the coyote was here first.

And there’s a deeper reason why I would never destroy a wild coyote. Wild animals that adapt to our cities have my respect. I’m thrilled to observe them.

“The human fascination with animals is so ancient and so widespread that it seems to be cross-cultural … universal ,” says David Barash in the essay “Animal Magnetism” on aeon.com.

Maybe my attraction comes from the impulse of early hunters, who observed animals with precision to avoid being eaten or to determine which animal could become food.

Pat Shipman, a Penn State paleoanthropologist, says, “… 26 million years ago … it began to be an advantage to us to learn about [animals]. Once you start being a … predator, you have to watch out for other competing carnivores … and for prey animals because that’s what you’re eating.”

Today, the coyote is everywhere. The eNature.com blog says coyotes’ “range has expanded greatly in the last 50 years … spreading from Canada and the American West … to the East Coast of the United States.”

According to urbancoyoteproject.com, “Trapping, killing and relocating coyotes does not reduce the overall population.… Coyotes … keep other coyotes out of their home range. The larger the territory of a coyote pack, the fewer coyotes are present overall. Removing coyotes from an area opens that location up for new coyotes to come in.”

And, it adds, “There will always be more … often resulting in a short-term increase in coyotes as the territory lines are redrawn by newcomers. Additionally, when there is less pressure from neighboring coyotes and more food available, female coyotes will have larger litters of pups, again creating a short-term increase in the number of coyotes in that area.”

I also read that coyotes naturally hunt in early morning, so the agile coyote and I both prefer dawn for our meanderings.

I’m willing to make room for him, which is good since he is here to stay.

Newport Beach resident CARRIE LUGER SLAYBACK is a retired teacher who, since turning 70, has ran the Los Angeles Marathon, placing first in her age group twice.