Messengers in the City: Media Representation and Wildlife Encounters in New York City

Frank Gaughan

Prepared for the Land Ethics for the Landless: Refiguring Aldo Leopold for the Urban Age Panel at the American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting Madison, Wisconsin March, 2012

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In the 1930s the coyotes established range was known to be west of the Mississippi River and concentrated largely in the Great Plains region of the United States. It is from this region that the animalcanis latransderives its colloquial names, the prairie or brush wolf.1 By the early 20th century, the coyotes larger cousincanis lupus or the grey wolfhad been extirpated from most of the United States.2 In fact, biologists estimate that the grey wolf has lost 42% of its North American range due to development, habitat fragmentation, and predator removal programs that began with European colonization and intensified with the expansion of the ranching industry in the 19th century. While subject to similar removal programs, the coyote has increased its range by 40 percent over this same period. 3 Today, the animal is an established presence throughout North America, and the ease with which it has traversed the urban/rural gradient challenges assumptions about the

1 2

Stanley P. Young and Hartley H.T. Jackson, The Cleaver Coyote, 3. David L Mech, The Wolf, 32-33; Hank Fischer, Wolf Wars. 10-23; Cat Urbigkit, Andrea S. Laliberte and William J. Ripple, Range Contractions of North

Yellowstone Wolves, 21-28.

3

American Carnivores and Ungulates, 126.

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antithetical relationship between urban development and the natural world.4 As one advances, the other is expected to recede, yet in this case an animal strongly associated with both Native American creation narratives and frontier folklore has expanded its range by moving toward big cities such as Tucson, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Chicago, Boston, and New York City. A highly adaptable species, the coyote finds suitable habitat in these and other urban locales. In some cases, the animal finds itself not just within the city limits but in the very center of urban space. In Portland, a coyote boarded a commuter train, taking a window seat after being chased from the airport tarmac.5 In Chicago, the animals have been captured in the downtown loop; and in New York, one of several coyotes captured was found hiding under a car outside the Holland Tunnel.6 Such encounters undermine long-held expectations for resident, urban wildlife, which mostly consist of small birds and mammalspigeons, squirrels,

Stanley D. Gehrt and Seth P.D. Riley, Coyotes (Canis latrans), in Urban Airline Industry Information, "Coyote hops on train at Portland airport. Shamus Toomey, Animal attraction; Coyote strolls into downtown Quiznos,

Carnivores, 79-81.
5 6

The Chicago Sun-Times, Apr 4, 2007; James Barron and Karen Zraick, TriBeCa Coyote Captured! New York Times, Mar 25, 2010.

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and rats, for example. Even the common raccoon appears strange in some cities, so much so that its presence occasions hyperbolic or sarcastic media coverage, such as the 2010 story in New Yorks Village Voice: Crazed Raccoon Alert! Rabid Animals Target Central Park. A related Voice article notes that No one's been attacked [by raccoons] since winter, but watch out, they're lurking. At least they don't know how to use weapons, yet.7 In context, the headline seems more comedic than sensationalist. Few reasonable readers will think raccoons have targeted the city or that they lurk in dark places fashioning tree branches into weapons, but such exaggerations discourage readers from thinking about urban space as a type of habitat and maintain the illusion that cities are alienated from the natural world.8 Media coverage of urban coyote encounters follows a similar trajectory by relying on blends of exaggeration, humor, and sensationalism to mask the discomfort that the animals presence prompts.
7

Elizabeth Dwoskin, Crazed Raccoon Alert! Village Voice, 18 Feb 18, 2010 and

Leslie Minora, New York's Wild Kingdom Is Going Batshit: Child-Eating Coyotes, Rabid Racoons, Sexin' Birds, Village Voice, Jul. 2 2010.
8

J. Baird Callicott, The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic, in A

Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays, 210; Clark E.
Adams and Kieran J. Lindsey, Introduction to A New Wildlife Management Paradigm in Urban Wildlife Management, 2nd ed, xix-xxxiii.

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There are, of course, humorous elements to some encounters. In 2007, a coyote walked into a Quiznos sandwich shop in Chicagos downtown loop, attempted to jump the counter during lunch service and eventually settled into the cooler, sitting with the soft drinks until animal control arrived.9 The reporter covering the story dispensed with the traditional inverted triangle format and invoked, instead, the stand-up routine in the first sentence: So a coyote walks into a Quiznos. But humor dissipates rapidly when coyotes come into conflict with humans and, more often, with their domestic pets. As the animals move closer in proximity to large population centers, such conflicts can be expected to increase. For example, an analysis of Chicagoarea newspapers reporting human/coyote conflicts found that the number of articles published on the subject increased by nearly 400 percent between 1985 and 2006.10 In a related study, Stanley Gehrt contends that the reality of urban coyote ecology is at odds with media representations. 11 That is, a typical urban coyote is unlikely to make news because its presence is unremarkable. In fact,

See note 6 above. Lynsey A. White and Stanley D. Gehrt, Coyote Attacks on Humans in the Stanley D. Gehrt, Ecology of coyotes in urban landscapes, 309.

10

United States and Canada, 420.

11

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Gehrt finds the animals well-suited to city life. On average, 62-74 percent of coyotes survive a given year in urban areas.12 They tend to avoid human contact and vehicle collisions, their primary cause of mortality, by shifting from diurnal to nocturnal activity. While more studies are needed, radiotelemetry data suggest that urban coyotes tend to avoid people, even if their home range includes a populated residential or commercial area.13 While most coyotes avoid people, they have a long and successful track record of making behavioral and even biological adaptations in response to human settlement and built environments. In the early 1900s, coyotes began a decades-long movement eastward, following routes to the north and south of the Great Lakes.14 The suppressed wolf population in Canada and the absence of wolves in the most of the United States combined with agricultural land uses to make an inviting habitat. Along the northern route, the coyote hybridized with eastern wolves, canis lupus lycaon, and the result was a larger animal. The eastern coyote averages 36-32 pounds, whereas its western counterpart weighs

12 13 14

Ibid., 305. Ibid., 307. Gerry Parker, Eastern Coyote, 20.

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26-23 pounds.15 This larger size allows the coyote to successfully hunt whitetailed deer in addition to its more frequent meals of rodents and snowshoe hares. Thus, the eastern coyote fills an ecological role left vacant by the extirpation of wolf in the United States. By the 1930s, the eastern coyote had established enough of a presence for hunters, trappers, and game wardens to take notice of a new animal in the northeast. Newspaper reports of these early encounters provide context for understanding the presentation of the urban coyote today. The contemporary news may use humor to deflect discomfort at the animals presence in the city, but popular representations in the 1930s describe the coyote and other mammalian predators as vermin, varmints, or enemies of the good animalsgame birds, deer, and livestock. Thus, in the 1930s, the coyotes arrival into a new habitat was framed as either a bizarre circumstance or an occasion for impending terror. In 1937, the Daily Boston Globe reports on Maine game wardens who trapped a 32 pound Western coyote. To explain its presence so far east, the wardens speculated that the animal had escaped from

15

Jonathan G. Way, A Comparison of Body Mass of Canis latrans (Coyotes)

Between Eastern and Western North America, 116.

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a menagerie or circus.16 In 1934, the New York Times filed a similar story in which Homer Mallow, a Pennsylvania hotel manager, reported a wolf sighting to the state game warden, Harry Meiss. The warden reacted incredulously, but Mallow was adamant, and offered to bet Meiss one-thousand dollars that the animals were in the vicinity of his hotel. Not to be outdone, Warden Meiss took the bet and, in addition, offered to chew the ear off any wolfor coyote that Mallow found in the state. To the wardens surprise, two of the marauders were killed and Mallow arranged to procure one of the pelts and confirmed that the animals were, in fact, coyotes. In fulfillment of the wager, Mallow had the ear of one of the beasts prepared, and planned to have it on hand for a dinner with Meiss early that February. Mallow quipped that the hefty wager might be waived if the warden were to give the ear a good chew.17

16

Daily Boston Globe, Maine Game Wardens Trap Western Coyote, Jan 11,

1937.

17

New York Times, Coyotes Ear to be Piece De Resistance at Dinner to Game

Warden Who Lost Bet, Jan 28, 1934.

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It is not surprising that 1930s era news features describe historically maligned predators as beasts and marauders or that the story emphasizes bizarre detailsthe wager and the chewing of the animals earover significant facts, such as the movement of an adaptable species with a high reproduction rate into a new range. The examples from Maine and Pennsylvania avoid consideration of natural causes and place the animal, instead, in an economic (and thus, civilized) context: The coyote must be a circus attraction or an occasion for a large wager. In other instances, literary and fantastic explanations appear more viable than natural ones. In November of 1930, the Boston Globe reports the story Eddy Jones, who had shot a strange animal near Brockton, Massachusetts a town approximately 25 miles south of Boston. Although an experienced woodsman, Jones said he could not identify his prey. He thought, at first, it might have been a German Shepherd. But the action of the animal, its crouching and vicious air, convinced Jones that he was not facing a dog, but rather an animal such as he had never encountered before. A furrier identified the pelt as that of a coyote, or as the Globe puts it: a stealthy creature of the western plains. The report then takes a literary turn, noting that the blood-

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curdling cries of [the coyotes] mate could be heard at night and that residents are seriously considering keeping weapons handy when they retire.18 In this way, the Globes report transforms the coyote into a supernatural presence, an unknown creaturevicious, cowardly, and stealthy. The audible and bloodcurdling presence of its mate suggests an impending vengeance, prompting residents to sleep with weapons. To tell such a story, the Globe account relies more upon a store of popular representations about vengeful animals than it does upon actual circumstance. Ernest Thompson Seton's popular narrative of wolf hunting in New Mexico provides an informing model. In Lobo the King of Currumpaw, Seton traps the outlaw wolf, Lobo, by first trapping and killing his mate, Blanca. Afterwards, an enraged Lobo follows the cowboys to their ranch. Seton writes, Whether in hopes of finding [Blanca] there, or in quest of revenge, I know not (37).19 The resemblance between the two tales ends there, however. Seton experiences great remorse for his actions. His connection with Lobo is such that he cannot bring himself to kill the animal; the trapped wolf, instead, dies of its wounds, which include a broken heart. Setons talelike
Daily Boston Globe, Hunter Found To Have Shot Coyote: Strange Animal
Ernest Thompson Seton, Wild Animals I Have Known. 37.

18

Bagged In Woods Near Brockton, Nov 27, 1930.

19

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Aldo Leopolds Thinking Like A Mountain amounts to a conversion narrative in which the death of the wolf prompts the hunter to see nobility in the prey that had formally been maligned. The Globes account, by contrast, replaces sentimentality with horror. The coyotes blood curdling cries might just as well have been those of a werewolfa shape-shifting anthropomorphic creature whose wickedness marks the worst in humanity.20 In this way, the news item fosters not empathetic connection, as in Setons tale, but a journalistic version of the supernatural sublime. Literary critic Jack Voller uses this term to characterize works of gothic and romantic literature that subvert the conventional meaning of sublime experiences. With the supernatural sublime, the world has been emptied of wonder, and the presence of evil does not imply the presence of a counterbalancing good.21 With the divine called into question, the experience of awe is displaced by terror. This feeling may account for the hyperbolic reaction of the towns residents. One does not sleep with a weapon because there may

20

Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men,230; Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and Jack Voller, The Supernatural Sublime, 20.

the American Mind, 12.

21

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be a medium-sized canine in the nearby forest unless one also attributes other worldly powers to the animal. As the coyote was beginning its journey eastward, ecological perspectives on the importance of predators were only just emerging. For example, Aldo Leopold wrote The Conservation Ethic, in 1933a work that bears strong resemblance to the more famous essay, The Land Ethic, which was not to be published until 1949. In this early draft, Leopold emphasizes mutual and

interdependent coperation between human animals, other animals, plants, and

soils.22 His categorization of humans as interdependent animals, marks a significant shift from earlier statements, such as his 1915 essay, The Varmint Question, in which he favors predator eradication over mutualism and writes that predators eat the cream off the stock growers profits.23 The term varmint also carries moralistic implications. David Worster notes that the word has been reserved for those species that plumb the depths of depravity.
24

Following

Leopolds turn to ethics, he makes statements that favor predators such as his

22

Aldo Leopold, Conservation Ethic, The River of the Mother of God and Other Ibid., The Varmint Question, 47. David Worster, Natures Economy, 260.

Essays by Aldo Leopold, 183.

23 24

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advocacy for grizzly bear habitat in 1936, but it is not until 1939, in A Biotic View of Land, that he offers a direct challenge to the long-established categorization of animals into useful and harmful classes: The only sure conclusion is that the biota as a whole is useful. . ..25 Perhaps benefiting from these and related perspectives on predation, contemporary media accounts of the urban coyote do not typically describe the animal as a varmint, beast, or marauder, but they still struggle to make cultural sense of the coyotes success in the city. As the animal moves ever closer to the center of the modern cities, it must once again be refigured. In New York City, one of the dominant metaphors appears to be the Warner Brothers cartoon character, Wile E. Coyotea figure who is more hapless than depraved. His inability to catch the elusive road runner masks Wile E.s predatory roots and also serves to elicit sympathy for him. New York-based news accounts detailing the pursuit of Central Park coyotes in both 1999 and 2006 make specific or implied references to Wile E. or the cartoon itself. One article notes that the coyote turned roadrunneras the

25

Aldo Leopold, Means and Ends in Wild Life Management, and A Biotic View

of Land, in The River of the Mother of God, 236 and 267, respectively.

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tawny-colored critter slip-slided across the Wollman Rink ice to elude his pursuers and their nets.26 Another article coyote emphasizes the awkward efforts to corral the animal: [The] final chasehad all the elements of a Road

Runner cartoon, with the added spectacle of television news helicopters

hovering overhead, trailing the coyote and the out-of-breath posse of police officers, park officials and reporters trailing it.27 In other instances, the Warner Brothers reference is more subtle, such as when the adjective wily is applied to the animal: The wily coyote led parks officials and police officers on a wild chase through Central Park last month.28 Another article notes that the coyote of 1999 was a wily survivor29 after being captured and relocated to a zoo in Queens, New York. The 2006 coyote was not so lucky, dying shortly after capture from the combined stress of human handling, heartworms, and the ingestion of rodenticide.30

26

Lisa l. Colangelo, Alison Gendar and Corky Siemaszko, Coyote Finally Is James Barron, A Coyote Leads a Crowd on a Central Park Marathon, New Joe Mahoney and Lisa L. Colangelo, Stress Killed Coyote Too Much Handling, Corey Kilgannon, Neighborhood Report: Corona; Coyote, A Wily Survivor, Is See note 28.

Outfoxed. Cops Get Runaround, The Daily News, 23 Mar 23, 2006.
27

York Times, March 23, 2006.

28

Worms Are Blamed, Daily News, April 8, 2006.

29

Alpha At His Zoo Home, New York Times, March 19, 2000.
30

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It is fair to say that most urban residents have never seen a coyote, except perhaps in a zoo. So initial efforts to reconcile the anomalous appearance of this animal into the cityscape rely upon comforting references to a familiar, lovable, but hapless cartoon character. Like its real-life inspiration, Wile E. Coyote is a predator; the difference, of course, is that he is not a very good one. The energy expended chasing the road runner and assembling contraptions purchased from the Acme corporation far outweighs any caloric gain that would follow from a successful catch. Wile E.s interest in the road runner is driven more by emotion and frustration than by hunger. During the chase, he relies not on his instincts but on upon flawed technologies and plans that typically become more and more complex as the episode progresses. In this regard, at least, the above news report is correct in noting that the coyote has turned road runner. This rhetorical switch suggests that city residents have turned Wile E., expending energy and resources in ways that are out of proportion to the quarry at hand. In 2006, officials chased the coyote around Central Park for two days before finally making the catch. It is hard to imagine such a commitment of resources or media attention in response to, say, a feral

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German Shepherd. Likewise, most criminal activity does not prompt the city to marshal helicopters and sharpshooters. Thus, it seems that the city, with the media in tow, was more intent on chasing the idea of a coyotea predator in the citythan the animal itself. The anthropomorphic qualities of Wile E. were not lost upon his creator, the animator and director Chuck Jones, who is also the creator of other notable, human-like characters: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Peppie La Pew, to name but three. In his memoir, Jones attributes the inspiration for Wile E. to Mark Twains oft-cited description of an actual coyote in his 1872 travel narrative, Roughing It. When Twain first saw the animal on a trip to the western territories, he writes that the coyote appeared to him as a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless.31 Although Jones was only seven when he first read the passage, he claims to have recognized the potential in Twains description immediately: Wile E.s frustrations and shortcomings help viewers to make sense of their own.32

31 32

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It, 561. Chuck Jones, Chuck Amok: The Life and Times of An Animated Cartooonist,

35-38.

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While this sort of imaginative refiguring may help in making cultural sense of the urban coyote, we will be unlikely to understand the presence of the actual animal in our midst until we more completely understand our own role as human animals in habitats that we both aim and fail to control. The adaptable and elusive coyote seems ideally suited to challenge urban ideas about the wild and its constituent wildlife. While New York City has a resident population of coyotes in the Bronx, its northernmost borough, the three coyotes that have made their way to the southernmost edge of Central Park in Manhattan provide the most direct challenge to urban assumptions that the city can be isolated from natural processes. These three coyotes have all received at least some media attention and, fittingly, pet names: Lucky Pierre, also known as Otis, in 1999; Hal in 2006; and JD in 2010.33 It is worth reflecting on the qualities of city life that drew these three coyotes to the same section of a park that spans over 800 acres.34 Coyotes often make use of park space, golf courses, greenways and other edge habitats, but the southern edge of Central Park is a

33.

For articles regarding the naming of Otis, see note 29; for Hal, see note 26.

For articles about JD, see Robert Sullivan. "J.D. Coyote; The thrall of the wild, in Central Park." New York, 8 March 8, 2010.
34

Central Park, Central Park Conservancy.

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tree line that forms the border of the park and 59th street, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the center of the most populous city in the US. The southern edge of Central Park is a study in contrasts, and the names for these three coyotes are associated with the strikingly different features of the area. The 1999 coyote, Lucky Pierre, was so named because of his proximity to the Pierre Hotel, where rooms start at about $800 per night. Just down the block from the Pierre, visitors find the Hallet Nature Sanctuary, a fenced 4-acre preserve for migratory birds that is off limits to the public, except by guided tours.35 The 2006 coyote came to be known as Hal, because, like Lucky Pierre, he was spotted in the area between the Sanctuary and the luxury buildings along 5th Avenue . Finally, in 2010, the coyote dubbed JD takes his name from J. D. Salingers Cather in the Rye because the novels protagonist, Holden Caulfield, finds solace near the duck pond, which sits just beside the Hallet Sanctuary. From a coyotes perspective then, a four-acre bird sanctuary that is largely off-limits to people and situated beside a duck pond is as close to ideal habitat as one might hope to find in the New York area. In this way, the coyote
35

Wheeler, Jesse, Hallet Nature Sanctuary.

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challenges not only ideas about the wild and wild life, but also ideas about sanctuary, an old word with strong religious connotations. The application of the sanctuary concept to wildlife, however, is relatively new, coinciding with the turn to conservation in the United States at the end of the 19th century. The

Oxford English Dictionary credits Arthur Pendarves Vivians 1879 collection of

travel and hunting narratives Wanderings in Western Land with the first usage of the word in this sense. Witnessing the near extinction of his quarrythe bisonVivian suggested setting apart certain districts as sanctuaries, within which the buffalo should never be molested.36 Indeed, the National Park System would eventually come to serve this purpose. In doing so, however, the sanctuary model helped to codify the idea that wildlife may be circumscribed by legal definitions and cultural expectations of wild, rural, and city spaces. Criticizing this limited view of nature in 1936, Leopold writes that [The park services] wildlife program is befogged with the abstract concept of inviolate sanctuary.37 Put another way, wildlife sanctuaries such as Hallet are idealized spaces that aim to create and maintain a particular relationship with

36 37

Oxford English Dictionary. s.v. Sanctuary. Aldo Leopold, Threatened Species in The River of the Mother of God, 232.

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nature. One makes an appointment to see the nature in the Hallet Sanctuary; and after a tour, exits the space. It seems fitting, then, that Hal was sighted scaling the eight-foot fence designed to keep out human visitors and was later seen in proximity to the feathery remains of a bird: Nature had finally arrived at the sanctuary, and the coyote, so long reviled as a western outlaw, had found its way from the prairie to a space that Olmstead imagined as remedial of the influences of urban conditions.38 Conflicts are inevitable as the coyote takes a place in urban locales. As media accounts document, coyotes have killed pets and attacked children on occasion. The fact that such encounters are atypical does not make their occurrence any less tragic or their possibility any less frightening. The coyote, like nature itself, disrupts us, along with our idea of sanctuary. In so doing, however, the coyote presents an opportunity for urban residents. Remarking on the character of city life, Leopold wrote that urban residents were a landless people, who maintained an esthetic appreciation for nature that was not

38

Frederick Law Olmstead, The Plan For the Park, In Empire City: New York

Through the Centuries, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson and David S. Dunbar. 278-281.

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informed by an understanding of it.39 As a consequence, environmental debates and policies tend to be less effective and more contentious than they should be. When we imagine urban spaces that allow us to co-exist with an adaptable predator such as the coyote, we also begin a long process of reclaiming urban land and connecting it with the rest of the natural world.

39

Aldo Leopold, Land Pathology. in The River of the Mother of God 214.

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Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays,

edited by. J. Baird Callicott. 186-217. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press 1987. Central Park, Central Park Conservancy, Last accessed 31 Jan 2012, http://www.centralparknyc.org/visit/general-info/faq/

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Colangelo, Lisa l. Alison Gendar and Corky Siemaszko. Coyote Finally Is Outfoxed. Cops Get Runaround. The Daily News, Mar 23, 2006. LexisNexis Academic.

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Wildlife Damage Management Working Group of the Wildlife Society.) 303-311. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu. Jones, Chuck. Chuck Amok: The Life and Times of An Animated Cartooonist. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989. Kilgannon, Corey. Neighborhood Report: Corona; Coyote, A Wily Survivor, Is Alpha At His Zoo Home. New York Times, March 19, 2000. LexisNexis Academic. Laliberte, Andrea S. and William J. Ripple. Range Contractions of North American Carnivores and Ungulates. BioScience 54, No. 2 (2004): 123138. JSTOR. doi: 10.1641/0006-3568(2004)054[0123:RCONAC]2.0.CO;2. Leopold, Aldo. The Land Ethic. A Sand County Almanac; with essays on

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---. Threatened Species Ibid. 232-238. ---. Land Pathology. Ibid. Lopez, Barry. Of Wolves and Men. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Mech, David L . The Wolf. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minneapolis Press, 1995. Minora, Leslie. New York's Wild Kingdom Is Going Batshit: Child-Eating Coyotes, Rabid Racoons, Sexin' Birds. Village Voice, Jul. 2 2010. http://www.villagevoice.com. Mahoney, Joe and Lisa L. Colangelo. Stress Killed Coyote Too Much Handling, Worms Are Blamed. Daily News, April 8, 2006. LexisNexis Academic. Nash , Roderick Frazier, Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2001.

New York Times. Coyotes Ear to be Piece De Resistance at Dinner to Game

Warden Who Lost Bet. Jan 28, 1934. ProQuest Historical Newspapers (101077814). Olmstead, Frederick Law. The Plan For the Park. In Empire City: New York

Through the Centuries, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson and David S.

Dunbar. 278-281. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Parker, Gerry. Eastern Coyote. Halifax, N.S: Nimbus Publishing, 1995.

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Seton, Ernest Thompson. Wild Animals I Have Known. New York: Scribners Sons, 1942. Sullivan, Robert. "J.D. Coyote; The thrall of the wild, in Central Park." New York, 8 March 8, 2010. General OneFile. (A220003651). Toomey, Shamus. Animal attraction; Coyote strolls into downtown Quiznos.

The Chicago Sun-Times, April 4, 2007. LexisNexis Academic.

Twain, Mark . The Innocents Abroad; Roughing It. New York: The Library of America, 1984. Urbigkit, Cat. Yellowstone Wolves: A Chronicle of the Animal, the People, and

the Politics Blacksburg, VA: The McDonald and Woodward Publishing,

2008. Voller, Jack. The Supernatural Sublime Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994. Way, Jonathan G. A Comparison of Body Mass of Canis latrans (Coyotes) Between Eastern and Western North America. Northeastern Naturalist 14 no. 1 (2007): 111-124. Academic Search Premier (25057357). Wheeler, Jesse, Hallet Nature Sanctuary, accessed Jan 31, 2012 http://www.centralpark.com.

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White, Lynsey A. and Stanley D. Gehrt. Coyote Attacks on Humans in the United States and Canada. Human Dimensions of Wildlife 14, no. 6 (2009): 419432. Academic Search Premier. doi:10.1080/10871200903055326. Worster, David. Natures Economy. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UP, 1994. Young, Stanley P. and Hartley H.T. Jackson, The Cleaver Coyote. Harrisburg, PA: The Stackpole Co, 1951.