When I awakened at 5:00 this morning, which is my custom, I did my business and decided to try to get back to sleep.  Didn't want to go out front for a smoke and cup of coffee because I didn't want the cats warting me to death or trying to sneak outside before sunrise.

It's that coyote in the yard last night.

Coyote is a a lot like humans in his ways.  He's difficult to trap without a lot of elaborate doings, even after a person knows him well enough to do it.  And if he's ever had anything to do with traps, it's a lot more difficult than that, probably impossible with one who's had his leg in a trap.  Nothing in the universe more cunning than a three legged coyote.

But he forms habits.  He'll go through the fence in the same place every time.  He'll jump the irrigation ditch between those two trees right over there, go diagonal off the bank and down.  Every time.  And those habits make him vulnerable to a snare.

Unfortunately, brother coyote, while he doesn't know this about himself, he knows it about other animals, including man.  A coyote will study a human and his prey the way a human who wants to get rid of him will study a coyote.

That's the reason I'm going to have to keep those cats inside during the hours of darkness, though that won't save them after the food availability out there on the mesa battens down the hatches this winter.  There was a good rabbit population, which allowed a lot of pups to reach adulthood.  But with that many adult coyotes the rabbits and rodents won't last long, and when they're gone it's going to be the village and whatever they can find.

A friend of mine, a trapper, uses road-kill cats for coyote bait.  Coyotes love the taste and smell of cat.

Jack