Magic

I realize this photo forces us to (ahem!) stare predation in the face a little more directly than most of us normally would, but still. For me, the magic in this moment was that the coyote stopped and looked me right in the eye…that’s the part that stopped my heart for a moment…but the *real* magic had nothing to do with me.

 

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We need large predators in Maryland. Seriously, we *need* them. Whitetail deer are so overpopulated here that our forests are decimated. You shouldn’t be able to look through forests and see the other side. The reason you can in Maryland is that deer have voraciously consumed all of the undergrowth and tree foliage as high as they can reach. Across the US, deer-vehicle accidents cause about 29,000 human injuries, 200 human fatalities, and $1 billion in property damage every year. And deer aren’t the only prey animals whose populations are wildly unbalanced. Maryland has one of the highest Lyme disease rates in the nation for exactly this reason.

 

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Coyotes aren’t actually large predators. Although they do help control disease-carrying rodent populations to a meaningful degree, they don’t have a big impact on our deer population. Usually they just take the occasional fawn. What we really need are wolves and cougars, but I don’t guess there’s really any chance of getting them back. So…coyotes are the best we have. And we should be *delighted and grateful* when we see them.

 

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Life is energy transfer, y’all. That coyote is turning groundhog into coyote pups…and probably fox kits, too, the little scavengers!…and also mushrooms, and vultures, and millipedes…and more.

 

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And it is good and right for them to do that. Magic, even.