Coyote

"Let's appreciate coyotes for the amazing beings they are. They offer valuable lessons in survival. Though coyotes try our patience they're a model animal for learning about adaptability and success by nonhuman individuals striving to make it in a human dominated world. Coyotes, like Proteus the Greek, who could change his form at will and avoid capture, are truly "protean predators." They're a success story, hapless victims of their own success."

"When I was still a teenager, I acquired a small, well-watered (with springs) ranch in northeastern . It was located fourteen miles east of the village of Des Moines—which I would later call "Hi-Lo" in my many writings and a major film. ...In those poor struggling days, coyote hides would bring from five to fifteen dollars—a ton of money at the time."

"I was having more trouble putting a rein, a stop, and instilling "rope and cow sense" in this horse than ever before. ...She literally loved and lived to run after the dogs as they ran down one of the smartest creatures ever born. She must have had the ancient genes of some great general's best war horse for she had a true blood lust. Molly loved to watch the dogs' fangs still a freshly caught coyote."

"Why do we profess to so love and adore and worship and seek closeness to the wolf, the supposed poster child for all that's remote, wild and free, the mournful soul-searching stuff of poetry and song, not to mention fawning documentaries and movies, while at the same time we're taught to despise and persecute by any means — bullet, trap, wire, poison — its close cousin and equally beautiful and rightful occupant of the wild, the coyote?"

"Blown out of the prairie in twilight and dew Half bold and half timid, yet lazy all through; Loath ever to leave, and yet fearful to stay, He limps in the clearing, an outcast in gray."

"The coyote is so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it."

"Americans are naturally drawn to big, charismatic, fallen heroes like wolves and bears, but coyotes are relegated to being small, sneaky, cowardly and untrustworthy."