Foxes And Coyotes

This evening I Zoomed with my previous Master Naturalist Chapter and it was good to see the faces of old friends. Unfortunately one of the old friends passed away recently after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. I knew he had been in the Army and that is where he lost his sense of smell which he said is very isolating. He used the doctors at Fort Snelling quite a bit but he ended up dying at the same nursing home that my father used. Poor man. I met his wife a couple of times when the chapter had meals together and she was nice too. Anyway, a young man working on his dissertation did research of foxes and coyotes in the Twin City area. He trapped them and put collars on them. He showed maps of where foxes and coyotes have been spotted. A coyote was spotted across the street from the house I grew up in. Foxes are about the size of a beagle. Coyotes weigh about 30 pounds but the largest one weighed 37. Coyotes prefer areas with few roads. For a coyote to move into a rural area would be like me trying to move into an apartment building where every apartment was already filled with tenants. One coyote in the Wood Lake area near the airport slept on a floating mat of vegetation. That coyote had to swim to take a nap. Coyotes can nap during the day very close to people. The researcher said he sat with a coyote for 90 minutes while it napped under a bush on a steep people. Hundreds of people jogged or strolled or biked by this coyote and never saw it. Foxes prefer residential areas. Foxes often den under porches or wood piles. One night in Roseville a coyote tried to dig into the fox's den so the fox started barking at the humans inside the house. After ten minutes of barking the woman came out to see what was the matter and made eye contact with the coyote on her elevated deck. The tricky fox used the human as a defense against the coyote attack. The tricky fox tricked the wily coyote! Coyotes help us humans. When they devour fawns in the spring they help prevent the spread of Covid in the deer population. I didn't know the deer were getting Covid too. My friend, Ralph, once said that if a coyote allows you to view it, that is a spiritual gift. I believe that is true. My "wasbund's" cousin once shot a coyote and had it hanging from the clothesline. I asked him why he shot the coyote. He replied that he shot it because it was a varmint. I didn't understand his reasoning then and I don't understand his reasoning now. Hopefully he has quit shooting varmints. I also learned that the recruiter for this chapter was ill. I texted her. Turns out she has stage 4 appendix cancer and does not expect to live. Today was a bad chemo day. Goldangitanyway! She and I shared rooms at hotels and went camping together. She hiked or camped at every state park in Minnesota twice and every one in Iowa once. Geez Louise! I offered to send her pictures from Texas every day and she said she would like that. So that is what I will do. A little distraction will keep her mind off of her troubles. I had better buy a postcard from Texas and send it to her house in North Saint Paul.