I saw a post on Facebook the other day suggesting that people stop believing that foxes were a threat to household pets.
Frances Hall Watson, one of my favorite friends I’ve never met, posted this meme.
One of the people commenting on it agreed with her, but added that on the other hand, coyotes will kill and eat anything they can catch.
Good to know.
Actually, during the 20-plus years I lived in Los Angeles, my home was in the foothills north of the city. Depending on how the weather had been, we would occasionally see coyotes roaming the streets looking for sustenance.
Foxes may look cute or adorable.
Coyotes never do.
The sustenance many coyotes found was people’s pets, mostly cats but some dogs as well.
My wife and two kids had outdoor cats when I came on the scene. You hardly ever saw them except when we put out food. They didn’t start as outdoor cats, but they urinated on a large stuffed animal my son had, so they were banned from the house.
At some point, the cats had kittens. Five of them. We decided to give the kittens away, and one of them went to the family of one of the boys on my son’s youth baseball team.
They loved the kitten, but had to return it because one of their daughters turned out to be allergic.
Oh well.
We took it back, and at some point later that summer, a coyote ate it.
Oops.
Anyway, when baseball started again the next season, the boy and his father came up to say hello. The dad, making conversation, smiled at my son (who was 10 at the time) and asked, “How’s that kitten of ours doing?”
Virgile got an absolutely stricken look on his face, recovered quick and blurted out a one-word answer.
“Fine!”
The dad smiled at him and he and his son walked away. Virgile looked at me and said, “Dad, I know you want me always to tell the truth, but I just couldn’t.”
“How’s that kitten of ours doing?”
“It’s dead. A coyote ate it.”
I told him I understood completely.