To the editor:
The March 26th Enterprise article on coyotes perpetuates the common exaggeration that they frequently eat cats and even dogs. While coyotes are opportunistic predators that will take a wide variety of small animals, pets are not frequently on their menu, except in some warmer climates like southern California where feral cats abound. The most relevant scientific study for us was published in The American Midland Naturalist in 2007 by Paul Morey and others, in which they examined 1,479 coyote droppings from the Chicago metro area, a much more urbanized (and pet-rich) region than Leelanau County. Cat fur was observed in just 1.3% of the samples. The most important items in their diets were small rodents (42% of samples), deer (22%, mainly from road kill), ornamental fruit (23%), rabbits (18%), and birds (13%, mainly as captive pheasants released for hunting at one study site). Dog fur was not significant in the samples. That said, we should keep our cats indoors because they face many dangers outside, particularly from motor vehicles, and outdoor cats prey on songbirds and small mammals. Furthermore, we should never feed coyotes or allow them to reach pet food, compost, etc., and we should scare them off if they approach so they do not get accustomed to people. They will run the other way if you make noise! Coyotes play a natural and important ecological role, and in fact they benefit us, for example by controlling rodents that carry Lyme disease and consuming road kill.
Steve Hamilton Cedar
