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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2153 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Happy Saturday Hubski. Have some chatty coyotes.

I love the yipping and the howling of them. Where I used to live, I would have a handful of lucky nights throughout the summer where I could on the steps of my apartment and hear them off in the distance. Obviously I was never afraid, cause they were never right near by, and the door to the apartment was literally just a couple of paces away. In fact, after posting this video, I've probably played it at least a dozen times already, because it makes me nostalgic for those nights.

Coyotes get a pretty bad rap. The attacks they have that involve humans are literally just a handful a year (compare that to the seemingly countless number of dog attacks each year). They're a very intelligent and versatile species, so they're pretty much everywhere and even in a lot of cities believe it or not. While they're used to us they're still very much more afraid of us than we are of them. People also think they're big things, like wolfs, but they're actually pretty small. Most are about twenty to forty pounds or so and come about knee high. You still gotta respect them, because they are wild animals capable of defending themselves, but even knowing how small they are in my head I was still surprised when I saw my first one in the wild. Dude was small.

Chances are, the guys were communicating with each other about your presence or something else, but I don't want to speculate because I'm not a biologist. I can definitely see why it'd put the hairs on the back of your neck up on end though. Especially in the dark of night, it was probably pretty damn scary to be in the middle of all that activity. I'm glad you, the barn animals, and your wild neighbors all survived the encounter though. When I heard a fox howl for the first time, I literally thought it was a woman screaming in the woods. It scared the ever loving crap out of me.

You can't blame me. If you heard that, and didn't know what it was, you'd be scared too.