If you are like me, you’ve coexisted with coyotes most of your life. 

In late-’90s Los Angeles, a coyote often appeared at my windows, a predator’s stare sweeping rooms for the seven cats in my small Craftsman. San Francisco came later, and with it the thrill of lone coyotes loping past rows of Victorians at dawn and dusk. Now, in Port Townsend, a coyote weaving through Douglas firs lights me up.

“Good to see you again, old friend,” I’d say, if we shared a language.

Call it North America’s jackal if you like: the coyote has padded this continent for about a million years and kept company with people for at least 13,000.

Light-pawed and cat-quick, adult males weigh 18 to 44 pounds and females 15 to 40. Often mistaken for wolves, coyotes are smaller than their relatives – the gray, eastern and red wolves. Their coats are predominantly light gray and red, occasionally featuring dull gold or caramel, and are often mixed with black and white; coloration varies by region.

The typical pack is a family unit – a breeding pair and that year’s pups, sometimes yearlings as helpers. Coyotes are socially flexible: unrelated adults may pair up, and “floaters” or immigrants may be tolerated, especially where food is plentiful. Many mammals show similar flexibility, including baboons, chimpanzees, dolphins and some deer.

Primarily carnivorous, coyotes prey on deer, rabbits and hares, rodents, birds and fish, but they also eat fruit and garden crops. On the Olympic Peninsula, that often means blackberries, huckleberries, apples, pears, plums, cherries, corn, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers and beets.

The coyote’s signature sound is a blood-stirring keening. Mary Austin once called it “the demoniac howl of the little grey dog of the wilderness” (1914). Judging by that line, Austin’s knowledge of coyotes didn’t leave the shallows.

Sadly, purple prose is the least of the coyote’s problems. Humans are the top threat, with their guns, bows, traps, poisons, refuse, cars, and habitat destruction. Cougars and disease add to the toll.

That said, how many American coyotes exist is anyone’s guess. There’s no reliable national census of coyotes. Agencies and researchers don’t publish a meaningful U.S. total but rather a ridiculous range – from 1 million to 10 million. 

What we can say with confidence is that coyotes live in every state in the union except Hawaii. They’ve never lived there due to the ocean barrier and strict import rules.

If you’ve ever seen an animal and wondered whether it was a coyote or a wolf, you might have encountered a half-coyote, half-wolf. The two species sometimes breed. In a 2009 paper, wildlife biologist Jonathan G. Way coined the hybrid creature a “coywolf” and, regrettably, the name stuck.

Like “mockumentary” and “hangry,” it’s a terrible portmanteau, especially for a scientist with three university degrees and a politically correct Facebook page. The species’ history among Native Americans is far more interesting. 

The coyote is a prominent figure in many of their traditional stories. In these stories, the animal is depicted as an individual, and the word “Coyote” is typically capitalized. 

According to Nez Perce cultural teachings, a monster was devouring the beings of the world near what is now Kamiah, Idaho. Coyote tricked the beast into swallowing him, then used the stone knives he carried to cut the monster apart from the inside, freeing the trapped beings. 

In the Syilx oral history, two sisters are said to have dammed the mouth of the Columbia River, preventing salmon from reaching the people. Coyote shapeshifted into a baby so the sisters would take him in. Later, Coyote became their husband, broke the dam, and sent salmon upriver. 

The Yakama tell a story that explains the permanence of death: An old woman’s lodge allowed spirits to return if the door was open. Coyote urged closing it, saying that future generations needed space and food. But when Coyote’s own child died, he rushed to the lodge and shut the door as the spirit was approaching. It never returned. Since then, death has been final. 

Native American histories are fascinating, but I digressed. Returning to the topic of coyotes in urban America, research published in the Aug. 27, 2025, issue of Scientific Reports showed that GPS-tracked Chicago coyotes favored land uses with natural features – parks, golf courses and unimproved lots. Well, duh.

“Coyote selection for human population density was not significantly associated with median income or the proportion of white residents,” the researchers also reported in what might be one of the oddest sentences ever to appear in a peer-reviewed journal.

A study based on 398 citizen-science reports of human-coyote interactions in and around Madison, Wisconsin, from October 2015 to March 2018 found that coyotes are not aggressive animals.

“On a 0-5 aggression scale (0 = calm, 5 = aggressive), 90% of citizen scientists rated coyotes 0 and another 7% rated them 1,” according to the study published in the Jan. 22, 2021, issue of The Journal of Urban Ecology. If only our aggression scale toward coyotes were 0, but it is far from that.

A July 28, 2024, Journal of Wildlife Management study found that nearly all Los Angeles coyotes tested positive for anticoagulant rodenticides used by pest-control companies. Yes, almost every coyote in the City of Angels had been dosed with rat poison.

A Jan. 21, 2025, Ecosphere study found that San Francisco coyotes consume large amounts of restaurant waste, resulting in poor health. Communal feeding at trash sites also spreads disease.

In Chicago, vehicles are the primary cause of coyote deaths, responsible for 40% to 70% of known cases. In San Francisco, 94% of the 72 carcasses collected from 2017 to 2024 were due to vehicle strikes. 

Coyotes persist anyway – tough, adaptive, and, for some of us, a welcome sight.

Scott Doggett is a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times’ Outdoors section. He and his wife, Susan Englen, live in Port Townsend.