Coyotes
Why are the coyotes so active right now? A mother and her two almost fully grown pups saunter across the meadow this morning and our guard llama Hijo alarms with his whiny. Not okay! he seems to say. Not on my watch!
They are an important part of the ecosystem here, and I would not want to live on a ranch that did not resound with the early morning yaps and eery whoops. I would grieve to not see them in their tricky ways moving through grasses and brush with such stealth.
It is said they eat far more rodents than larger game. They are one of our helpers who keep the gopher population down. While we have little control over inviting them in, we can do a lot to make room for them by fencing in what we do not want them eating (the goats!) and making sure there are wildlife corridors through our ranch through which they can move.