Community Chat

[Irish1210]

Please be careful and keep your four-legged friends safe : )

[fourpaws56]

I would keep the dogs in...my large black lab was attacked by a coyote on my front porch..She went to the vet and several stitches and antibiotics later she was fine...I never let her out of my sight after that...the wild animals are hungry and thirsty, and not really afraid of humans any longer

[goldensrbest]

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@hsawaknow wrote:

I would be nervous too. We have a mountain lion hanging around our neighbors yard and I worry about the cats outside

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Now that would terrifie me!!

[Azcowgirl]

In the desert the coyotes eat mesquite seed pods as a staple in their diet, and Since I have lots of mesquites on my property, I rake up piles of the pods and toss them out into the open desert in an effort to keep the coyotes off my land....it’s a big job every summer 😥

[fourpaws56]

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@Imaoldhippie wrote:

Coyote's are not usually that big and pretty slim.  If it was bigger than your golden then Im guessing it may have been a wolf.  Do you live in wolf territory?

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we have a lot of coyotes here in Ca...some of them are very big...no wolves here..mountainlions come around a lot tho...

[Cakers3]

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@goldensrbest wrote:

There is a open field next to me ,hot here today 89 ,looked out a window saw something laying in the field,a big coyote, in the sun ,he is bigger than my largest  golden,and twice plus the size of my little red girl.

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@goldensrbest  You might check out the Home Forum-@homedecor1 has the same problem and posted a picture earlier today with a coyote sitting in a large field.

Do you live near each other?

[Kachina624]

People keep thinking they see wolves, which is highly unlikely.  They are very elusive and shy and don't hang around where people might be.  I have friends who went to Yellowstone in the fall just to observe wolves.  There are many in some large packs in the park.  They never did see one.

Coyotes in the Eastern part of the country are quite a bit larger than the Western coyote, probably because they eat better.

[sfrangu]

We have coyotes around here all the time. They cross the small streets between the cars stopped at the stop signs, they walk up the hill when you walk your dog/s on the lower streets, they are everywhere. And they are BIG. We have a big Alaskan Malamute (way larger than labs or retrievers) and these coyotes are a head taller. I wouldn’t be afraid for her because she’s big enough to take care of herself, and us too. But there are so many other small animals and kids. It’s kinda scary to see the coyotes so daring.

@goldensrbest, where do you live? I thought here, in SoCal, are the tallest coyotes. 

[Ms tyrion2]

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@Kachina624 wrote:

People keep thinking they see wolves, which is highly unlikely.  They are very elusive and shy and don't hang around where people might be.  I have friends who went to Yellowstone in the fall just to observe wolves.  There are many in some large packs in the park.  They never did see one.

Coyotes in the Eastern part of the country are quite a bit larger than the Western coyote, probably because they eat better.

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I did some research and found that eastern coyotes are bigger because they are a hybrid of coyote, wolf and dog. When they began to migrate east about 200 years ago, they interbred  with the other species out of necessity. Because there are plenty of their own species now, they no longer interbreed.  Western coyotes did not interbreed to the extent the eastern species did, so they remained smaller.

Evolution of the eastern species also created a larger animal because their primary food source in the east is deer which are far more plentiful in the east than for the Western coyote. They had to adapt to a bigger size to handle the .larger prey.  

[sfrangu]

Then our Western coyotes are some mutants. Huge, and I mean h-u-g-e.