Coyotes! with Lulu Miller

Who is out there behind the howling midnight parties in the distance? For generations we have coexisted in varying degrees of rivalry, conflict, and admiration with the North American canine known as the coyote. From pre-colonization to our modern backyards, through the wild west and the streets of San Francisco, award-winning NPR science reporter and YWA Maligned Animal correspondent Lulu Miller takes our pack on a journey toward a better understanding of these resilient creatures.*EDITOR'S NOTE: Lulu Miller would like to submit a correction to her statement that Ronald Reagan put a band on coyote poison, she actually meant Richard Nixon. Sarah would like to add that he grew up drinking raw milk and at least one of his brothers died of tuberculosis which really makes you think, doesn't it? Terrestrials // “The Howler: The Dog Who Joined a Coyote Pack”https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab-kids/articles/the-howler-the-dog-who-joined-a-coyote-pack More about Lulu Miller:https://radiolab.org/team/lulu-miller Visit Christine E. Wilkerson's website https://scrappynaturalist.com/ Support You're Wrong About:Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merchWhere else to find us:Sarah's other show, You Are GoodLinks: http://patreon.com/yourewrongabouthttps://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-abouthttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpod Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sarah Marshall?

  You know what, Mark Twain, maybe you're an allegory at one. You ever look in the mirror and think about that?

• 0:17Sarah Marshall?

  Welcome to You're Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall, and today we're talking about coyotes exclamation point with Lulu Miller. Lulu Miller is the host of Terrestrials. She's the co-host of Radiolab. She's the former co-host of NPR's Invisibilia. And of course, she's the author of the bestseller, Why Fish Don't Exist. Lulu was last on a couple of years ago for our Lesbian Seagulls episode. I loved making that episode, and I loved making this one with her, too. This is also kind of a sassy sister piece to a new Terrestrials episode called The Howler, The Dog Who Joined a Coyote Pack. So if you like this episode, please

• 1:00Sarah Marshall?

  check out that one, too, and check out Terrestrials. In this episode, we talked about some of the history of coyotes, that history being entwined with American history as a whole, what it takes to be a survivor, and how humans can identify with the animal world without just projecting ourselves onto what we see. Lulu also wants us to tell you that during her research on coyotes, she learned quite a lot from the conservation scientist, carnivore ecologist, and urban ecologist, Dr. Christine E. Wilkerson, and that a lot of what we get into in this episode comes through Dr. Wilkerson's research. And as a fun bonus, at the very end of this episode, we have a clip of Lulu Miller interviewing Dr. Christine Wilkerson.

• 1:45Sarah Marshall?

  If you want bonus episodes, we have plenty for you on Patreon and Apple Plus subscriptions, and our newest one is a fun jaunt through newspapers.com that I took with Chelsea Weber Smith. We gave each other a few words. We went out on a scavenger hunt, and we brought each other back what we found. And shortly, we will be coming out with a new bonus with Miranda Zickler, producer of American Hysteria and woman of many talents on Peg Bracken's I Hate to Housekeep book and what it means to hate or perhaps tolerate housekeeping. Thank you so much as always for joining us. Thank you for being here with us. Thank you for tumbling

• 2:29Sarah Marshall?

  and fumbling into spring. Thank you for surviving. Here's your episode.

• 2:43Sarah Marshall?

  Welcome to You Wrong About, the show where we talk about maligned women and sometimes maligned animals. And with me today is our maligned animal correspondent, Lulu Miller. That's your beat.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Really is my beat. Last time, we talked about often known as the rats of the sky, gulls.

• 3:03Sarah Marshall?

  Yep.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Seagulls.

• 3:03Sarah Marshall?

  Love it.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  And today, we're talking about what we could call the rats of the medium sized carnivorous predators.

• 3:11Sarah Marshall?

  I'm so happy that we're talking about coyotes. I don't know what direction you're going to take it in. You just said the word coyotes to me and I was like, yes, perfect. And I will tell you my personal fun fact about coyotes.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Oh, please.

• 3:25Sarah Marshall?

  Which is that when I was growing up, where there were coyotes, you know, I believe you're going to tell me something about there being like 40 coyotes per human in this country or something, whatever the statistic is.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 3:36Sarah Marshall?

  But we would hear coyotes like having a party like they do when I was a kid. And because we watched a lot of PBS nature shows for a while when I was little, I thought that they were hyenas.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that. The hyenas of the Pacific Northwest.

• 3:49Sarah Marshall?

  The hyenas of Soviet Island, yeah.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  I mean, they are, when they party, I, the first time I heard them party in the wild was when I was in my early twenties and growing up in the Boston suburbs, like I had really never heard them. And then I did, and I truly thought it sounded like witches. Like it was such a primal, coven-y, electrifying sound, like that

• 4:17Speaker 01

  like, and tons of that. I mean, there's something so exciting about that sound.

• 4:23Sarah Marshall?

  There really is. Yeah. And it's, and I heard it the other day because I was out taking a walk and there's like, you know, coyotes still in the Portland area, of course. And, you know, and there's a A video, I think, that went viral a couple of years ago about a kid being chased by a coyote across their yard.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Oh, really? In your area in Portland?

• 4:44Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, and somewhere in Portland. But like, yeah, I heard them the other night and it was that thing where you have your headphones in and you're like, oh, what's happening? Is there a football game at the high school? And you're like, no.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  But like same vibes, same like blood boiling vibe, excited, communal excitement, you know?

• 5:02Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And I don't know what the circumstances of those party sounds are, but it just like, I don't know, and it doesn't sound menacing to me. It would sound menacing if it was closer, but like many things, when you're far away, you're like, ah, nature, nature is sexy.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, nature is sexy. So yeah, that is, that is what we're here to say. You already brought one of our characters into this story called, social media is gonna have a, an effect on not just our perception of coyotes, but the lives, behavior and migration of coyotes, which is pretty wild.

• 5:33Sarah Marshall?

  Wow, yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  To really start, I think we gotta crack our knuckles and can I hear, can I hear your best coyote howl?

• 5:41Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, boy. I can just do like a regular dog howl. Can we start with that?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  You do, yeah.

• 5:47Sarah Marshall?

  Okay.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  That was so dainty, Sarah.

• 5:54Sarah Marshall?

  Thank you.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm gonna give you my coyote howl.

• 5:57Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Cause it helps me get in the zone for this story.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  All right, you ready?

• 6:05Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  To go? Okay.

• 6:06Sarah Marshall?

  I'm ready.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  What are your associations, feelings? Like you said, yes, let's do coyotes and you said, let's call it coyotes with an exclamation mark.

• 6:17Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Why was that your response? And what, if anything, just rough, what are your feelings about coyotes, your associations, your feelings?

• 6:24Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, so I, yeah, to like free associate, my associations with coyotes are like, I like a scavenger animal, which I don't even think that they are as much as just opportunistic, but like I've always liked rats. I had pet rats as a kid.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 6:39Sarah Marshall?

  And as you mentioned before.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:42Sarah Marshall?

  And like there's something about, and I respect. You know, the trauma people have with rats, because like a rat when you're not expecting them, or like, you know, a loose basement rat in your house is not fun.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:56Sarah Marshall?

  But a pet rat that you can feed banana chips to and like is so nice. And so I've always been, and you know, the rats of NIM, I think, was like a big thing for millennials.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:09Sarah Marshall?

  And so I think of coyotes in the same breath as like, you know, these sort of, and again, in a very non-scientific capacity, I think of them as like, on the foxy end of the dog spectrum, you know, of like, that maybe we feel a little bit uncomfortable with just sort of the degree of a society that they've built within hours without asking us for permission to do it, similar to rats. And then also, you know, I know that like, they eat little dogs and it's hard to live in an area that's all mobbed up with coyotes if you're a small dog owner.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:44Sarah Marshall?

  Especially. And is this a public safety issue? Because like, I don't have little dogs or little kids, so I'm not personally worried about it. But I am curious about, as with most things, like, the line between superstition and rational concern and where that actually falls. But I believe I'm gonna, you know, be, I don't know, I was once sitting in a coffee shop in Portland and I saw a coyote just like, ambling, you know, down a bike lane. And that's a moment I treasure. I like to see a coyote. That's the kind of person I am.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  And one more beat on why? Just why do you treasure that moment?

• 8:23Sarah Marshall?

  I just, I like a trash animal, you know, and I think, and I think that's a whole vibe, right? That like, people, there's like, a lot of people, I'm sure, listening to this show right now, who love a raccoon, who love a possum, who love a rat, who just like, love to see an animal who's like, maybe not looking the most photogenic, but is just like, surviving and carrying her babies around and just living, L-I-V-I-N.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And thriving, probably.

• 8:54Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they're Animals. And I think that that shimmer, that like prismatic shimmer of admiration, fear, uncertainty, like what are they ness is so, I mean, that is so, it's so key, not just to our perception of them, but their animal nature. And so the story I want to tell about them, like, I was thinking about, I was kind of outlining it all last night. And I was like, this actually reminds me of there. It's to me, they're not just a story of like, behold, the animal that is a mirror to our human feelings. They're not just a mirror. There's something even more strange. And this is an idea I got from many conversations with the scientist, Christine Wilkinson, who I just like, I interviewed her, I think, three times about coyotes. She,

• 9:38Speaker 01

  go follow her. So much of this comes from her. So she is scrappy naturalist.com. And she, you know, she studies scrappy, she studies just like, you know, scrappy creatures, hyenas, coyotes, and she's incredible. And she painted this idea of like, this almost suddenly felt to me like an invisibilia story where we talk about how invisible emotions and things like that influence human behavior. But this is like, how feelings influence animal migration, behavior, aggression. I mean, it is a wild, in that sense, almost ghost story. Like, you can watch these, our feelings, our judgments, having really real life, like profound and

• 10:23Speaker 01

  surprising effects on populations of coyotes. And she is, Christine is someone who studies that. She's a migration ecologist. So she studies like how things move. And in the way that she kind of was always trained to look at things like climate change, or, you know, how highways affect migration, these concrete things. She's come to really see how like feelings, human feelings affect. And I kind of think of it as like, you know, there's a water cycle, there's a Kreb cycle. There's also like a cycle of emotions, like an emo cycle.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  And it has impact like on the soil and our which the flavor of them affects things. So that's kind of the story I'm gonna tell for you today. And coyotes are just, man, they are really influenced by our feelings.

• 11:07Sarah Marshall?

  I'm so excited for that.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Okay, so we begin our wild tale and like coyotes tell us so much about the American experiment toward its slow decline.

• 11:17Sarah Marshall?

  Such as it was, yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Okay, so chapter one, we are going, we're going Wild West. It's spaghetti western time. We are going to the American West. And, you know, coyotes before European settlers showed up were really only found west of the Mississippi. And but they were, you know, they were all over. There are likely hundreds of thousands of them roaming around in terms of what do they eat? They can be scavengers. Like, they will totally scavenge. They're what's called a mesopredator. So they're, they're not the apex, you know, those would be the gray wolves at the time.

• 11:50Sarah Marshall?

  Okay.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  They're in between. They're like, they're getting hunted by wolves, but then they're also hunting gophers and bunnies and birds. But they're generalists. They will also totally, they'll eat berries. They'll eat insects. They will eat human refuse. They will eat trash. Like, they are trash pandas in that way.

• 12:10Sarah Marshall?

  I'm remembering too, I've, yeah, I've got like a fondness for omnivores, I think. There's just something very charming about an animal. Well, and, you know, it can be dangerous for them, but generally charming about an animal who's like, yeah, I'll eat that. I'll have that. Whatever.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  And coyotes are truly like the omnivores of not just eating, but everything. So scientists call this amazingly like trashy generalists power. They just call, it has such a boring name. I want to rebrand, but they call it behavioral flexibility.

• 12:41Sarah Marshall?

  Well, yeah, once again, we're getting into our theme of, you know, seagulls and bisexuality and just like living how you gotta.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  And living how you gotta. And so they will, I mean, okay, so they do it with eating, as we kind of just ran through. They'll, they'll totally hunt. They can be great hunters. But they'll also, are they nocturnal? Are they awake during the day? Are they crepuscular? The dusk, they're anything, Sarah. They will do, they'll like, if they need to become nocturnal, they'll become nocturnal. Now, do they hunt in packs? Or do they hunt alone? Either. They'll do either. They'll do pairs.

• 13:12Sarah Marshall?

  I just like to fuck with naturalists.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  They do. And like, they just, well, okay, very quickly, this is so dorky, but to, so wolves really like to, like, they need to hunt in their packs and they, they, they're amazing pack hunters. Coyotes can pull it off, but they, but they can also do it in pairs, or they could go alone and just scavenge, or they can hunt solo. And this is that, like, ability to either be a pack or a solo, that's called, scientists call it fission fusion.

• 13:42Sarah Marshall?

  Whoa.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it is actually, in the animal world, it's pretty rare. Like, there's only a few animals that will basically swing both ways. And in terms of being lonely or kind of social, and humans is one of the only other ones. And it, and it does kind of like, extend our adaptability, like, because then you could, like, in a social distancing thing, you can thrive by being alone, but you can also thrive if you're-

• 14:07Sarah Marshall?

  Well, sort of.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Kind of. You can try.

• 14:09Sarah Marshall?

  We made it. We scraped through, to an extent.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  So coyotes are one of the very rare, like, non-primate who do this. Dolphins do it, elephants, bats.

• 14:18Sarah Marshall?

  That's so interesting.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Very, like, limited amount of mammals will do this. So coyotes do that. They also, and I love this so much, they also will hunt with other species. And I don't know if you, did you happen across the kind of viral badger coyote friendship?

• 14:38Sarah Marshall?

  No. How did this happen?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  So there's, this was, you know, went viral, it was caught on film of this badger and a coyote just like, ambling through a, through a tunnel together. And both of them looked relaxed. They were not in a, like, aggression, kind of, like, they were buddies. And scientists have looked at it, and what happens is, like, the badger is really good at digging. The coyote can run up to 40 miles per hour, so they'll, the coyote can, like, chase, let's say, a gopher. And then if it goes under the burrow, the badger can flush it out. And then they've been documented to share the spoils, and their kill rate goes up, even though the coyote could probably kill the badger. It's like, so this is what we did our terrestrials episode about, is the friendships, because- There's a story of a domestic dog that joined a coyote pack for almost a year.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  It was documented on trail cams. And so they'll do this interspecies friendship. They also have friendships with like ravens because the ravens will, they've learned to like follow them toward carrion, which they will eat because they're scavengers. But then usually the raven hangs out to get the like shredded up bites. They've been like shown to befriend with the mortal enemy of canines, which is bobcats, at least in a rescue setting. So a puppy and a kitten. So they're all, so anyway, they're just like, they are omnivores of behavior of night and day, of food, of hunting. And they just like, they're not the best at anything, but they're okay at lots of things.

• 16:04Sarah Marshall?

  They're not afraid to adapt.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And scientists are now, everyone's kind of freaking out about all these kind of cool interspecies friendships because things have been caught on film. But like indigenous traditions going back thousands, they likely think thousands of years. Paulette Steves is an indigenous scholar who like kind of looks at deep time and the coyote myth. But the coyote has always been seen as this kind of shapeshifter that will befriend other animals. So like it's there. And coyote is actually a, it is an indigenous word originally from the Nwaddle people. So anyway, we're in the American West. The European settlers haven't come over. Lewis and Clark like cross the Mississippi and are like document like, what's this strange little like scrappy mini wolf thing?

• 16:51Sarah Marshall?

  I gotta read those Lewis and Clark journals. They've gotta be over the top.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and that's, that's where they used to be, just kind of living among, hiding from the wolves, eating their birds and berries and, you know, coexisting with indigenous people. Like they, they were just kind of down with all different types of habitats. And that was kind of their, their wild life, like estimates of about like half a million of them maybe out there. Enter the European settlers. Okay, so they come out, you know, we're mid to late 1800s. They're setting up their farms with these juicy cows and pigs and sheep.

• 17:31Sarah Marshall?

  It's a buffet.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  It's a buffet. And so, you know, by the 18, you know, just wolves and coyotes are like preying on the livestock. And so they are very quickly reviled. Uh, and they kind of go from this more ambiguous. In some indigenous groups, like the coyote is actually a deity, a, a, a create, there's a creation myth. There's all kinds of different reputations, but it quickly, the sort of European settler reputation becomes very negative. And I don't know if you've ever heard of a fellow named Mark Twain.

• 18:03Sarah Marshall?

  I've heard of him, yeah.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  It is right around this time that he kind of like really cements the, the new reputation of the coyote as this villain. And so let.

• 18:13Sarah Marshall?

  Why did you do that, Mark Twain? I thought we were, you know, I thought we had an understanding here.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Oh, no. So he, so roughing it comes out in 1872. And this is like so coinciding with this moment where European settlers are kind of like villainizing the coyote. They're, they're convincing sort of local livestock associations are putting, are convincing the local states to put bounties on coyotes and wolves and to, you know, make it fine to kill them. And so Mark Twain describes the coyote this way. "The coyote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton with a gray wolf skin stretched over it." I love that. Like it's, it's like a sheep in wolf's clo- it's like a, I don't even know. It's just like a skeleton in wolf's clothing.

• 19:01Sarah Marshall?

  It's a wolf and wolf.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  "A tolerably bushy tail." Okay, so that's like the, the tail gets a little love, but, but it forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery. Uh, "Its eyes are described as a furtive and evil eye." So we're just like, boom, you know, this is not a majestic beast. It's, it has a long, sharp face with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general sinking expression all over. "He is a living, breathing allegory of want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless." We, we know that is very inaccurate.

• 19:40Sarah Marshall?

  You know what, Mark Twain, maybe you're an allegory of want. You ever look in the mirror and think about that?

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Uh, he goes on, "The meanest creatures despise him and even fleas wouldn't desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he's so homely, so scrawny and ribby and coarse haired and pitiful."

• 20:12Sarah Marshall?

  I feel like this is like how we've historically written about gay people, where it's like, they're so scary, but they're not scary, but they kind of are.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're so scary, but not in a strong or admirable way. Yeah. So like-

• 20:24Sarah Marshall?

  They're scary because I don't want to be like them. And it's like, aren't we all opportunistic, bushy tailed guys who will eat whatever we can get and be friends with a bagger? I mean, ideally, right?

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So anyway, that's kind of like, the vibe is shifting. It's just like, screw you coyote. You're not, you're, you're wild and you're eating, but you're not even like, we're not going to even admire you like a wolf. Like you're just-

• 20:48Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Yeah. Cause I feel like there's like still so much drama around wolves and I'm, that's a whole other conversation, but like-

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:55Sarah Marshall?

  That sort of in the American West, still there's this thing of like hating the wolf, but also respecting the wolf. And in this case, it's, there's like, the fear is like grudging. It's like, I don't even want to be afraid of something this, you know?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  It's fear without respect.

• 21:12Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a totally different vibe than the wolf, even though they are like, you know, coyote's only a little bit smaller, like super similar wild canines eating the same things, but-

• 21:22Sarah Marshall?

  It would be very hard to describe to an alien how they're so different. And yet you would never get Farley Moet's Never Cry Coyote. I don't think, although I would like it.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  I know. What would that story be? You know, like, let's think about our most famous coyote. Who's our most famous pop culture coyote? Meep Meep.

• 21:41Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, and you know what? There is one where he did finally catch the Roadrunner, but the trick was that the Roadrunner had been made giant. And so he like holds up a sign that's like, now what?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, I didn't know that. But yeah, like he's just- He can't catch this bird and he wakes up every day and he fails.

• 22:01Sarah Marshall?

  Oh slander.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  It's such a not noble creature. So, okay, so it's so cementing, cementing their place in our imagination as to be feared, but not respected. And, and you know, the decades go by and then by the early 1920s, the kind of ranchers and livestock associations have actually convinced a federal bureau, the, the biological survey bureau to basically like wage a war of extermination against coyotes and wolves and mountain lions.

• 22:33Sarah Marshall?

  They're like, eradicating a species probably won't cause any issues. So.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Sounds like a good idea, right?

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Basically, there's this, you know, federally funded extermination campaign. And the story of the gray wolves, you probably know, and you know, they're like, it's like shooting, poisons, trapping, all kinds of stuff. Wolves, the gray wolves are famously wiped out, you know, within just a few decades after that, the sort of that, that start.

• 23:04Sarah Marshall?

  God, this is, this is reminding me. I like went on a trip with our friend of the show Candace Opera last year and we went through Kane, Pennsylvania. Have you encountered this town in your research?

• 23:14Speaker 01

  I have not.

• 23:15Sarah Marshall?

  It was, I think it was like the, it might've been the gray wolf or like the timber wolf or something, but some kind of wolf that was being systematically eradicated by the US government. I don't know how many wolf species that happened to. And there was this rogue doctor in like rural Pennsylvania, and I think the twenties, who was like, no, instead of killing the wolves, give some to me. And the government, I guess, was like, okay. And so, yeah. And so it's this, you like drive through this town and there's all, there's like a wolf stack shoe and a little wolf museum. And you're like, all right, something, this, there's some history here. And it turns out that this doctor had this big like wolf sanctuary where he was taking care of these wolves, you know, who's species mates, I guess, were, were all being eradicated by the government

• 23:59Sarah Marshall?

  at the time. And that population eventually made it, I think to Montana or something. And so the descendants of those wolves are like, some of, if not the only wolves of that species that are still around.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Wait, that is so rad.

• 24:15Sarah Marshall?

  Right?

• 24:15Speaker 01

  This guy just kind of protected them in a little part of Pennsylvania?

• 24:19Sarah Marshall?

  Kane, PA.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  I need to go.

• 24:20Sarah Marshall?

  Shout out to rural Pennsylvania. I feel like they like, it's like the reverse version of the children of the corn, right? When you like end up in a small town with like a really great secret.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  That is so reversed.

• 24:37Sarah Marshall?

  Children of the wolves.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  There was no one, there was not a Kane, Pennsylvania of the West, unfortunately, for the gray wolves. So by about this, you know, the 1960s, like the gray wolf population, I mean, those, those howls, the wolves from like the howls in the forest are gone. It is, they are just gone. There is a tiny pocket of them up near Canada and Minnesota, like north, north, north, but like totally gone.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Now coyotes, they are being attacked with the same volume of bullets, poison, money. And guess what happens?

• 25:16Sarah Marshall?

  They survive, I guess, bad.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Not only do they survive, they expand. The more you try to kill them.

• 25:26Sarah Marshall?

  Fuck you, Mark Twain.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  The more they come back. They are like the Hydra is like, you chop off a head and two more grow.

• 25:34Sarah Marshall?

  Like mint.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  And it like, so they were described by some people as unkillable. And, and this is real, this wasn't a perception thing. Scientists, a bunch of scientists have studied this and there isn't, as far as I know, like a term for it, but there are these adaptations that basically when they are killed and when there is sort of less population density in a certain area, these evolutionary adaptations kick in, which allow them to have larger litter sizes.

• 26:04Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Isn't that awesome and wild?

• 26:10Sarah Marshall?

  I'm just, yeah, and I'm just such a like a non thought, very visceral response of like, fuck yeah, coyotes have as many puppies as you can.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  But that's this kind of like the first moment I'm seeing Christine Wilkinson's idea of like the, the cycle of emotions. It's like the more we hated them.

• 26:26Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  The more we persecuted them, attacked them, called them evil, the more they thrived, throve, thrived.

• 26:33Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And our fear of them just makes them have more babies.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yes. And, and that, you know, it's, I just think that's so fascinating. And like, we're not totally sure the mechanism, but they probably think it's because when there's one or two gone in a given area, then the ones who are around are able to have more food, which then is like more caloric content to create more babies and for those babies to survive. It's just beautiful. Another reason they were probably able to survive. So there's kind of like three reasons they were probably unkillable. Number one is that magic, the more you kill me, the more babies I have. Uh, number two is that thing we talked about, the generalist's anthem, the behavioral flexibility, you know? Wolves, if their pack is taken out, their hunting goes way down. Coyotes, if they're, someone from their pack is taken out, they can, they'll turn to scavenging. They'll turn to, you know, they'll hunt at night. They'll, they'll learn. And, and so that behavioral

• 27:22Speaker 01

  flexibility, just like, it gave them other options for how to hunt, what to eat, when to hunt, who to hunt with. Befriend a badger. As they famously say, no more livestock, befriend a badger. And then the third thing is going back to this idea that they're mesopredators. And so in a way that wolves were apex predators, they weren't used to being hunted. Coyotes were. And I, I guess I have this like totally unfair, now I'm going to step out of the role of like dutiful animal reporter and just be projecty woman.

• 27:56Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Put on your projecty woman hat.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  But like, it's a power of being prey.

• 28:01Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  And I think there's a way in which, um, you know, I remember someone once talking about horses and how like they know, they know when they're being watched. Like they, they have to be a little bit better at that than a predator, because you know, the predator needs to watch, but it doesn't have to have eyes behind its back, you know?

• 28:26Sarah Marshall?

  Or giant eyeballs on the sides of its face.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, on the sides. Right. And there's just something to me about like, The wolves started getting hunted by humans and then they were just like toast because they hadn't evolved to learn to be scared of something, you know?

• 28:44Sarah Marshall?

  Well, yeah, and just the idea of like, identity is something that holds us back. And especially, you know, in this moment of like, Americans, sort of like, white scary masculinity, having what feels like a big charlie horse ideologically of just like, we have to force women to have more babies, but only white babies.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  I've never heard this moment described as a charlie horse, but man, is that just like, ow! And then your leg kicks out.

• 29:12Sarah Marshall?

  Right? They're just like, something's wrong, but I, I'm gonna make it worse. Yeah. And just like, you know, the, the sort of like wild spasming in every direction, except for the ones that help you and like trying to make every other category of person do stuff, or you know, deporting just anyone. And people know, and if it's not 2025 when you're listening to this, you remember.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:36Sarah Marshall?

  Sort of white American masculinity having a crisis at this moment, it seems, because there is a lot of stressed and emotionally pliant men out there who are kind of easy pickings for ideologues who can come along and be like, do you feel like you should be making more money and having more sex than you are? Well, it's everyone else's fault and it's also the fault of social justice warriors. And also, concentration camps will help you go on more dates. And it's like, I don't think they will, but, but this sort of like panic that feels to be coming from, you know, I mean, not to get too politically complicated, but like, A, like a very reasonable panic

• 30:18Sarah Marshall?

  coming from the fact that like industries are being destroyed and like, you know, desiccated and that that is, is happening, but it's being carried out by the people in office right now for reasons of varying stupidity. But B, this idea of like, men can't be men anymore because we can't survive under the very specific code of behavior and sort of, you know, masculinity.

• 30:42Sarah Marshall?

  And patriarchy that was handed to us and that we believed was the only way to be in this idea of like, I'm not thriving in this metric where I can't express my feelings to anybody and where I have to be a provider for a family, but not be provided for in any way, except by demanding that I be fed three meals a day, but nothing emotional, no emotional nurture ever.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:07Sarah Marshall?

  And just this thing of, I don't know, there being, A, the appeal of like, people who know what it's like to be prey, know how to survive and therefore will endure the situation. And B, that like, if you're not thriving under the conditions of what you think your identity has to be, then like, maybe that's not your identity. Maybe you can eat garbage.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, right. Okay. So yeah, like you're saying in that thing, that sort of like, the white males are the wolves. And it's, is that

• 31:38Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, yeah. They get hunted and they're like, we're not used to this. And it's like, why don't you adapt? And they're like, I simply, no, I would rather die.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  There's only one way, like, I want to be a pack. This is how we've always done it. Totally. And I think there's something for me about like,

• 31:52Sarah Marshall?

  Nothing against wolves. I love wolves.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 31:55Sarah Marshall?

  You know, it's like when Susan Sontag famously compared white European colonial imperialism to cancer. And then people got upset and she was like, I'm sorry, that was offensive to people who have cancer.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Nothing against wolves. But yeah, I think there's something, and again, I'm still in, we're still in projection sidebar.

• 32:14Sarah Marshall?

  Yep.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  But yeah, there's something like, there's just something so beautiful to me about in this story, seeing the coyotes be unkillable because like, when you're a mesopredator, you know, you have to hunt, you have to be a prey. You're, you're not just like always hiding. You gotta, you gotta go out and risk, but you also have to kind of hide and be on alert. And like that, it is an anxious state to be mesopray. Like, you're always wondering, like, if you're under attack, but that, maybe there's some benefit to all this anxiety. Like, maybe there's some benefit to the fact that my nails are chewed down and I'm always kind of modulating my tone of in certain rooms and worrying about Or why thing I don't want to step on and but that like under duress like we have been honing

• 32:59Speaker 01

  and honing and like to see them just thrive.

• 33:03Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  And it's like they already know how to bob and weave and there's a point to all that.

• 33:09Sarah Marshall?

  And they're like, this is what I was made for.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the toll it may take and the literal energy lost on that alertness under duress may give us a leg up.

• 33:19Sarah Marshall?

  I love that.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  I feel like matters to think about right now, at least for me.

• 33:25Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah. Well, and also to like, I don't know, put a button on projection corner. I also get annoyed, as I bet you might, when A, when we use, you know, when we call like criminals predators, you know, even in like to catch a predator context, it's like this guy is a Jimmy John's manager from Muncie. Like, I don't really think that we need to call him a predator. You know, it's not like he's an alligator who can wait for hours and hours until a tourist pokes him or something.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:52Sarah Marshall?

  And really, like, when I think of the male charley horse freakouts that are sort of dictating our policy in this country at the moment, I'm like, you are not a predator. You are that video of a deer that crashed into the window of a Quiznos or something. Have you seen this? There's a video.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  No, but it's so funny you're bringing up Quiznos because Quiznos is coming up in our story.

• 34:19Sarah Marshall?

  I'm so excited.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  But I haven't, I have not heard about the deer in the Quiznos. I do know about the coyote in the Quiznos.

• 34:23Sarah Marshall?

  It might have been, you know, it could have been a pot belly. Who knows? But like some normal franchise restaurant where you're just like, it has been a long day. We are going to have a sandwich and we're going to go home. And there's video of like a deer just like crashing through this plate glass window and just like skittering.

• 34:44Sarah Marshall?

  Skittering straight into this family that are like trying to have dinner and absolutely bodying this teenage girl and then like just clattering off like on the tile, you know? And I think like, and this is another just sort of like specious conclusion that I have based on pop culture, but my understanding is that like, you don't want to get attacked by a wolf, but also you probably won't. And a wolf probably will look at a human and be like, I'm not dealing with that. Right? Like, things would have to be pretty weird. But if you corner a deer, they will use everything they have to survive and they will probably like slice you up with their little hooves. So like, men who are freaking out are not predators. They're just confused deer.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  There we go. Okay, animal facts from projection corner.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Okay, we are, well, okay, one last thing before we hop out of the sidebar bar.

• 35:37Sarah Marshall?

  Okay.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  I just would like, since we were bringing up Quiznos, I would like to do the, uh, the requisite shout out to, to my brilliant wife. Uh, the other day we were talking about sub shops and subs and she was like, there should be a sandwich shop called Sublime.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Like there should, right? Do we need to quit everything? And like started, I just was like, oh, cause subs are so sublime when they're good, they're sublime. Anyway, yeah, okay. Whatever them being mesopredators means to us in this moment, accurately what it meant is it, they evolved alongside wolves and they learned to be scared of big predators. So when they weren't wolves and they were humans with guns, they did a bit of a better job at evading them. And they, they completely survived this eradication campaign. And as we discussed, they even thrived, their populations expanded, their territories expanded. Uh, and so come the 1940s, we

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Just tried to kill them harder.

• 36:40Sarah Marshall?

  Uh huh.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  So the thirty thirty one, Congress passes the Animal Damage Control Act. Ten million dollars of nineteen thirties money to exterminate coyotes.

• 36:49Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, Lord.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  They develop all kinds of new poisons.

• 36:53Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm, and spread them across the countryside. I'm sure it'll be fine.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  That one of the big ones is called Compound Ten Eighty.

• 37:02Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, which wasn't developed there, but it was like, it was already developed, but they they started figuring out to use it as kind of a coyote control thing. And and it's a really gnarly, the way it works. It's like a slow, painful death. It's horrible. There's like a whole side note. I was just like, I wonder about other stories about like, how has Compound Ten Eighty like? Just like this thing that like, because of our fear of coyotes, kind of came into human usage. And there's this whole thing in New Zealand where there was like a famous case. So they were using Compound Ten Eighty all over. And this environmentalist, you know, and animals were dying and and and he he slipped the poison into baby formula.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  And held the whole country hostage and caused this like food crisis because he was like, I'm not gonna tell you where it is until you guys stop using Ten Eighty. And like, there's a whole like.

• 37:52Sarah Marshall?

  Wow.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  New Zeal- anyway, so Compound Ten Eighty appears, blah, blah, blah.

• 37:56Sarah Marshall?

  In America, we get to have crises because people can't afford a formula. No one cares. So don't know which is worse.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Okay, but so anyway, they they they, you know, they're just like stepping up the coyote can- there's bounties. There's this woman, Janet Kessler, who who studies coyotes, kind of a citizen scientist in in San Francisco. And she remembers people telling her about you would get paid four dollars, like kids could be paid four dollars if they showed up with two coyote ears. So there were like literal bounties on their literal heads. There were killing competitions, poison, blah, blah. It's still really not working out there, but it is finally kind of working in the cities. Like, San Francisco is a very interesting one to look at because coyotes were always there and then they weren't there. So then they kind of disappeared. And and then, you know, finally Reagan is actually like, you know what?

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Ten Eighty doesn't sound like a good, like, there's all the the birds are, you know, dying, so they put a ban on Ten Eighty. And that's kind of where we are. But basically, from the time they started this campaign to about nineteen seventy two, they guessed that about eight point five million coyotes were killed. And yet, didn't really put a dent in the population, which is which is pretty incredible. So then we kind of enter this, this next phase where like now we're kind of getting into the eighties. I think Sarah Marshall's born, Lulu Miller's born. We pop out into the world.

• 39:20Sarah Marshall?

  Big decade. Who Framed Roger Rabbit came out.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  I don't know. This, the world I came into, I didn't have any direct contact with coyotes. And so they kind of existed in my imagination, a little bit more like a wolf. Like I'd see them, I'd picture that they, they felt like the West howling at a moon. Maybe they'd be like stitched on to like a motorcycle jacket or.

• 39:40Sarah Marshall?

  Or like in the rough of a parka.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And to me, they were like a symbol of like wildness or innocence. So when I first heard them howling in the woods of Cape Cod.

• 39:55Sarah Marshall?

  What?

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Uh huh. I was shocked and I was, I was in my like late teens and I was ecstatic because I'd been going to Cape Cod my whole life. And suddenly it was around them that I started hearing them. And it turned out that at some point coyotes probably crossed one of the bridges over the Cape Cod Canal.

• 40:13Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, they did.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Their little silhouettes like marching in a line and then started running, wreaking havoc on the Cape because they had no, no predators there. So there's just like all these things.

• 40:23Sarah Marshall?

  Like coyotes on the Cape, as they say.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Like coyotes on the Cape. And I remember here, like as, as we said earlier, like I would hear those howls in the woods. And as a kid growing up in like the Boston suburbs where I felt very cut off from wild, wildness, I felt oppressed by kind of polite social norms and like, I don't know, it just was never the place for me.

• 40:44Sarah Marshall?

  Where the lulls talk only to cabots and the cabots talk only to God.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Exactly. And Lulu talks only to the, the squirrel outside the window. So anyway, then I heard coyotes and I was like, oh my God. And I would just listen to them at night. And if I heard them, it was like an owl. It was like, oh, an owl, a coyote. You know, it was like the treasure

• 41:04Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Because where I grew up, we were just like next to like, just like a field, just like empty space. Like it was like kind of a sheep farm for a while or for a long time, but it was mostly just like space and would get rained on and a little bit flooded. And so swans would come and you know, Canada geese stopped there when they're migrating north and south, or you can hear the frogs in the spring and just like-

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Is there any better sound?

• 41:31Sarah Marshall?

  No. Yeah. And just the feeling of like falling asleep with the window open, listening to frogs. It's like, I never want people to not have that.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it stills the blood.

• 41:43Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I, I think it was hearing it, it was just like, oh, there's still wildness out there, even Cape Cod, you know?

• 41:51Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, they made it.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Lee, yeah, like we haven't completely paved paradise, you know?

• 41:57Sarah Marshall?

  Well, there, of course there was like such a big moment that we all made fun of at the very start of the pandemic of like, we are the virus, nature is healing. And that was like, kind of insane, I think, given the context, because it was like, I don't know, I don't think it's going to heal that much in four days. But like, I was so swept up in that, in the moment and just the desire to be like, surely there has to be some benefit to all of this.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Ecologists called it the anthropose and just this like pause on kind of like infiltrating ecosystems. There was, I listened to this really cool podcast about like the acoustics of the ocean and how it's without boats and without people, like literally there, there, oh, this is so beautiful. This blew my mind. There is a dawn and dusk of the under, not underworld of the underwater. And literally at dawn and dusk, like different little shrimp and like things kind of wake up around the reef and, and they, it allowed them to get these like incredible acoustic recordings of what these kind of circadian rhythms actually sound like underwater without-

• 43:03Sarah Marshall?

  Of the shrimp waking up.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Humans messing it. And it's like, there was a real effect on nature. There was.

• 43:09Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Tiny sidebar. Tiny, tiny, tiny sidebar.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's go.

• 43:13Sarah Marshall?

  Okay. I was thinking, I don't know, this past week about Star Trek and, because I, I remember my parents watching TNG when I was like too little to understand what was going on, but I could like, sort of there, the visuals sort of convey some amount. So I think of it as like the show that the grownups are watching.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:32Sarah Marshall?

  Because I don't know, been watching a little bit of TNG lately.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 43:36Sarah Marshall?

  Anyone who loves Star Trek already knows this, but like so much kind of current sci fi and like fantasy dystopian stuff is just like, what if we took everything that's happening now and reskinned it for a slightly new world? And I feel like that's what a lot of the new Star Wars media has been like. And it's like,

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:54Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, you know, I mean, that's like, there's certainly like a lot of value to dystopian storytelling. It like serves to show us sort of like Children of Men is one of my favorite movies. And that certainly is in that vein.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:07Sarah Marshall?

  The world of Star Trek is like, you know, what if the future is about, you know, we, we work in these really diverse workplaces and it's about like communication and teamwork. And there's like misunderstandings between people because we're different from each other and we're trying to achieve a common goal. And it's like, there's like, I don't know, so much metaphorical autism in Star Trek and like, but that's really, I don't know, like thinking about it lately, I've been like, you know, I don't fucking want to go to Mars. I do not give a shit about Mars. I might've liked it more in the past when it was a less politicized idea, but like, there's nothing for us on Mars, you know, there's just like, and the, and it's easy to take a

• 44:52Sarah Marshall?

  dim view of humanity because we certainly do get up to a lot of awful stuff. What do you think about, even if we're not alone in the universe, we're like very far away from anyone else that we could talk to or from any other kind of a planet that can support this amount of life, you know, and like the sort of incredible rareness and incredible specialness of the earth, the fact that it's not disposable and also that people are really precious and that we don't have, I don't, in my opinion, we don't have a universe, certainly not a galaxy that's like jam packed with other sentient creatures that we can like have diplomacy with, you know, I think like the secret of Star Trek is that it's like, it's just about earth.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. Make it work with the people you're cooped up with.

• 45:41Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, right. And like, it's like, is space the final frontier? Or is the final frontier just like learning how to get along with people with different communication styles? You know?

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, I love that. And that the final frontier, you're not going to go find elsewhere where there's, where there's nothing around.

• 45:58Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. It's just like data and wherf learning about human weddings.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  I love that. And how'd you get there from hearing coyotes in the woods? How did that, or in the woods?

• 46:09Sarah Marshall?

  Well, just this thing of, yeah, the early pandemic days of like, oh, nature is healing. Humans are staying home and we can hear the shrimp again. And it's like, yeah, I want to hear the shrimp waking up. And I want, like, we, we understand that things are out of balance, you know, and that this amount of human intervention is bad. And not just for, you know, for like, the part of nature that is us, because we've created an environment that is really hard to thrive in, you know? Especially, you know, just looking at the United States. Like, it is a utopian dream for most people approximately our age to be able to have, you know, grocery shopping, schools, playgrounds, and like, a nice bar within walking distance. You know, like, most people don't have that.

• 46:52Sarah Marshall?

  And that's really all a lot of people are asking for. So I guess this thing of like, it's like, easy to look at humans and be like, I don't like any of this right now. But also, I don't know, I want to be able to find moments to treasure the fact that like, we behave against nature in a lot of ways. But I think at the end of the day, like, we are nature and we are a part of this precious world that we're trying to protect and that is the only one that we get to have. So we have to protect humanity and foster the best in it as much as we take care of anything else.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  That, yeah, of course, that line, that divide that we keep searching for is not there. Like, there, there was this beautiful book, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, called The Gap. Not about the gap, not about the close of the gap, but about all the ways scientists over the years have tried to define the gap between humans and animals. And it's like, tool use, nope. Language, nope.

• 47:49Sarah Marshall?

  Clothes, nope. Orcas put, what if like, orcas are putting like, fish on their head or something?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  And like the ways that humans behave, I mean, I think one of the cool things coyotes show us is like coyotes like use a lot of our similar tricks, like, like the things we do, coyotes do a lot of that stuff. And so, yes, it's a beautiful reminder also for, for someone like me who like tends to romanticize nature and only view humans as parasites. And I need to like, get over that. Just to be like, no, we are, we, we maybe even belong to.

• 48:22Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And also that's, I don't know, that we hold ourselves to unreasonable standards and then get disappointed. And it's like, no, like, we don't have to be noble. We don't have to behave in these certain ways that we invented, or someone else invented and imposed on us, you know, but just like, I think part of the human hatred of rats comes from the, similarly, like, they're like, they're unkillable, and they're opportunistic, and they can survive anywhere, and they will survive anywhere, and they will have lots of babies, and eat whatever, and figure it out. And I think that like, we want to think that we're these, you know, we, we are the masters of our domain, because we are the best, and we are the apex predators. And it's like, no, we're not, we're something better. We're street rats who just want to live. And that's pretty great.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Behavioral flexibility, man. Yeah. So, okay, so we're in this romantic period of the, now we're in the late 90s, early 2000s. I'm, you know, in the Cape Cod hearing howls and

• 49:21Sarah Marshall?

  Low rise jeans are in, etc.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  So, now I have to tell you a very sad part of the story, which is that my dog, Charlie, my family dog, a West Highland Terrier, a little Westie, yeah, he was eaten by coyotes in front of all of us. And we did not see it, but I say in front because we heard it. And it was like, right at dusk, it was like, we had never, we hadn't known to keep him inside, because for his whole life, he'd, he'd sat outside on the deck, and it was fine. But coyotes had like, suddenly filled up the woods, and had made it further and further out of the Cape. And they got him. And then it was, it was horrible. He was 13, so he'd like, had a good life. And that's the one consolation, that he didn't like, go out and vet. But, you know.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  People told us it was probably like very quick. But the next morning, we were all very sad and just like rearranging the chairs. Like, where is he? Where's his spot on the floor? Like, it just was this, we were all like looking at our feet and noticing the emptiness of the floor, the quietness of the floor. It was very sad. And then my mom, as a joke, was like, well, maybe he didn't get eaten by the pack. Maybe he went and joined the pack. And that was like our family joke. And like my sister painted this little painting of like a westie leading these coyotes. And, uh, but then I learned about the interspecies friendship. And I was like, it is very unlikely, but it is not zero percent.

• 50:48Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Well, that's how I feel about, you know, the escape at Alcatraz. It's like, did they drown? Probably, but we don't know. We never found bodies. They could have made it.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there was a case just a few years ago in, uh, upstate New York, or maybe it was Connecticut, where there was a, there was a, a dog who, who was with the coyotes. And there was a case in Nevada, even more recently of a dog who like ran with coyotes for almost a year. So it has happened. Those were bigger dogs, but still.

• 51:13Sarah Marshall?

  Well, and I feel like that is like part of the human story with nature, right? Where it's like, I feel like a lot of stories are about people who have certain ideas and then are personally victimized by nature and are like, never mind, I'm against that now. So, I mean, what, I'm curious about how you metabolize that. Unless, you know, he's out there still riding the rails.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, now he's like 40.

• 51:38Sarah Marshall?

  You never know.

• 51:40Sarah Marshall?

  You know, but like that, the feeling of connecting sort of the thing that thrills you when you hear it in the distance with the thing that can come up on your porch.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  If his end, he was getting to be old and if he had to be in a vet on an IV or some like sad, like two months where we couldn't accept and he was hurting. Like, he went out healthy. He went out likely in 30 seconds. And he got to maybe have a moment where he was like, thought he was a wild dog. Like, he went out like a wild creature. And so I, I think probably that's my own projection as a kid who felt confined by the suburbs. But like, there, there was something about like, he got to go out like a wild dog. He got to commune with that former self. He got to like, for a moment, leap toward a pack that maybe he thought was beckoning him. And maybe they were tricking him and eating him, but like, he got this moment. And, and so I actually like.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Think that's kind of like badass for little Charlie that he got to go out that way.

• 52:36Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  So, okay, we've got like our third act to hit.

• 52:42Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, boy.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  It's right around this time and I'm a little blurry on exa- I think everyone's a little blurry on exactly when this happens because coyotes are truly so wily and sneaky and hard to pin down. But they start early 2000s, like they start showing up in American cities.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  And again, maybe they in certain cities, they already were, but they, they, they start getting sighted more and more. And to just focus on San Francisco for a second again, because like that holds that whole like the bounties and they were there originally, but then the bounties and then the, the, around 2002 was like one was sighted in the Presidio. And so they like re-enter these American cities. The population is continuing to explode. Now, people don't know exactly, but before the extermination campaigns, they guessed it was about half a million coyotes in the wild. Now they think there's like somewhere between one and 10 million. So there's just like so many more. The, the campaign did not work. It had the opposite effect.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  They are so good at thriving in cities as this kind of, you know, they are like really an apex predator of the city now. You know, all kinds of things, that flexibility, they can, they can go out at night and roam solo through the alleyways and eat trash and open trash cans. But they could also like hunt in a pack in a cemetery, say, and, you know, get a rabbit or whatever. They can eat berries and they can eat, uh, you know, candy bars and they can eat like, there's tons of food. There's tons of different ways to get it. And that meso predator that like be wary, they're also really mostly really good at hiding from us.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Like the, these days, the estimates are that in Chicago where I am, there's like two to four thousand coyotes. Just like that kind of emerge at night after like downtown has kind of cleared out and.

• 54:38Sarah Marshall?

  Man, that makes me happy. I'm just, I feel so much better. Knowing that there are that many coyotes probably in Chicago.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  And they think they're in Manhattan. They think they're in Philly. They're definitely in San Francisco. There's, there's, they're definitely where, you know, where you are, they're in Portland.

• 54:53Sarah Marshall?

  I think in Philly, they're like running student housing for Penn.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, they're in LA, they're in San Francisco, they're in a lot of, of American cities. And in some of them, there's like a lot of them.

• 55:06Sarah Marshall?

  There was a photo that went around like 10 years ago of a coyote that very confidently got on the Max train at the Portland airport and took a seat.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I have not heard about that. Yeah. And they've learned, um, the one thing that can be really dangerous to coyotes in the city, obviously, is humans and cars. You know, cars going fast, that can get a coyote. They have been observed to obey traffic lights. So they wait for a green light or, you know, a walk sign basically to cross.

• 55:34Sarah Marshall?

  Well, and then I've heard of like feral dogs and like Russia doing that and or like taking the bus or the subway. And like people theorizing that it's like, even if they can't tell the light is changing, they like can follow people or like, I don't know, figure out the pattern. Which humans do too, right? I do so many things that I don't know why I'm doing, but I know that it works and I know that someone told me to.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they're just like, they're all these, you know, the train, the traffic lights, the sub shop, the grocery store, the skylight. Like they're just all these stories of, of coyotes thriving in the city. You know, in Chicago, they'll also hunt, like they, they'll hunt in the Chicago River. And, and so I had heard that Graceland Cemetery, um, which is a big cemetery right near Wrigley Field in Chicago, had a bunch, like it was a really good place to see coyotes. And so I went right after dawn one morning with this guy, Robert Lorazal, who, who just has an incredible account where he takes pictures. He snaps pictures of wildlife in the city and he gets like hawks, foxes, coyotes. And I went to see them with him and we walked around and he took me up to this statue, which is called like Eternal Silence.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  And it's this very scary grave that is for some of the first like European settlers in Chicago. It's terr- it's like nine feet tall, looks like a grim reaper. And the urban legend is that if you look into its eyes, you'll see how you're gonna die.

• 56:54Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, man.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  And so he was doing that one. He had heard that. He went over to do it. And he didn't see that, but he saw it was his first coyote in the city and a coyote like popped out and he snapped this awesome photo of it. It's so metal. And then anyway, so we walked around and we weren't seeing it and he was telling, he was showing me all the spots where we see them. And then we started to, we sat down and started to talk. And then, um, suddenly a literal gravedigger comes up to us and is like,

• 57:20Sarah Marshall?

  Yes.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  You guys were looking for coyotes, right? Look behind you. And we were being watched. We were being watched by three coyotes. Isn't that wild? And they're like, we were looking for them for two hours. We couldn't see them, but they were totally watching us and they have learned, like, they have mostly learned to stay out of our way because like, if they bother us, we get scared and then we often kill them. I don't know. So like, I, I feel like they're in this moment now where they're coming back to our spaces more and more because they, because of their ability, they can thrive there. And like cities are actually like great environments for them.

• 58:00Sarah Marshall?

  Don't peregrine falcons also like cities?

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Do they? I don't know.

• 58:04Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, I think there's like a lot of peregrine falcons in like Minneapolis and it's, they've like, adapted well, or it like suits their needs because it's like, they really like skyscrapers, I think, because they can, you know,

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Interesting, because it's like a perch. Yeah.

• 58:18Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  So, right. And the, the few species that can, you know, like survive in a, a, an urban graveyard, like some geese, some ducks, maybe some rabbits, some rats. All delicious prey.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Plus whatever picnic you left behind in the trash, you know?

• 58:37Sarah Marshall?

  I guess that like, if humans are leaving food all over the place, which we do everywhere we go, then like we also, that attracts animals that are like, if you don't want the trash that's on offer, you can eat the animals eating the trash. I love it. It's a circle of life and it moves us all.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  And so now that like, we're kind of coming into contact them with them again, but not as ranchers as much. Obviously, there are ranchers who have their feelings about them. But, you know, yes, some of us are small pet owners, but like, it's this, I feel like it's this, it's another sort of prismatic moment where, and this is another thing Christine Wilkinson studies in, in the Bay Area was kind of like complaints over the last 20 years since coyotes reappeared in San Francisco. And she says there's this whole range where you get some people being like, oh, they're back. It's beautiful. And then they'll say things like, I don't want to be a snitch, but I am seeing this one near the park and I'm a little worried about toddlers and pets.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Or you'll see in other ones being like really angry that are like, you know, I pay taxes, coyotes don't. Get them out of here. And there's like even a politician who's a city councilman in Torrance, California, where coyotes were kind of becoming a problem. And he ran a campaign, he like started this grassroots organization called Evict Coyotes, which was suddenly this like counterpoint to the Humane Society and Greenpeace and that, where it was all about like, let's, you know, he campaigned on basically coyotes being a nuisance and he won and they started this, like, they started back up a kind of lethal injection program where they kill a coyote

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  a week, which again, as we know, probably isn't going to help the problem.

• 1:00:23Sarah Marshall?

  Right. It almost feels like a kind, like actually similar to what executing human beings offers you as a politician, which is to perform a kind of passion play and prove that you're doing something that feels effective, even though, you know, logically and also from a statistics perspective, it probably doesn't matter.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  So this, this idea of like our emotions, you know, like that are like vilification of them could like help this guy, what was his name, Arollio Matucci, win city council in Torrance. But also that, that hatred of them, like we slather that vilification all over them and our fear of them, our want to hunt them just makes them come back more. But then also in another way, like are you, this was. This part like absolutely destroys me, this kind of last thought. So our yearning, our love of them, like are you like, I, I kind of feel still in the camp of even though they ate my dog, I still like admire and like them for all the, you know, like this, that they're still wild and they.

• 1:01:19Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, if you love a wild animal and understand that it'll be wild, then like that's true love.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  And that they can survive us, like that there is still wildness in these places we have contaminated, like that, that the wildness finds a way and that, that's beautiful. That's exciting to me. Mostly coyotes in cities, you know, we do need to worry about small pets. That's a real thing. And like, if we want to coexist with them, we just probably shouldn't leave our pets outside. That's like a great fix or just make sure you walk with them on a leash, you know, that's a way to coexist. But another thing is that like, they will learn that we are dangerous to them. They will mostly avoid us. They will in the graveyard be watching us and even when we're trying to find them hide, unless we start feeding them.

• 1:02:01Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm. Yeah, there are signs around Portland and maybe around Chicago too, that are like, a fed coyote is a dead coyote. Don't feed the coyotes.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, and, and there's this story that Christine told me about in San Francisco, where there was this one coyote got aggressive. Um, and you talked before about a coyote that was like following a toddler, right? Across a.

• 1:02:26Sarah Marshall?

  There are like a, actually just like took like just chased a kid across a yard briefly and then gave up very fast, I believe, when an adult came out.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And these are the ones that go viral. Robert, who I walked around with in Chicago, like feels really tortured about, like he, he posted this video of a coyote that was kind of walking back and forth across a little footbridge in the cemetery toward a woman reading, who must've been reading a really good book because she didn't notice. And then Christine, similarly, also there was a video that went viral of like this coyote kind of like really basically stalking a toddler in the Bay Area. And there have been attacks, like very scary attacks, but yeah, really of these thousands of coyotes living among us, these are the outliers, but then they become the celebrity, they become the fear. And right in the Bay Area, there was this, it was truly one coyote who they named Carl,

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  who was, his kind of territory was Buena Vista Park. And there was this one unhoused woman who was hand feeding him.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  And he got used to the idea that like, there would be food and. And and it was basically when she passed away. That he start, he moved to another park and he started attacking.

• 1:03:39Sarah Marshall?

  No, I want a biopic of Carl.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, but it's heartbreaking because you think about that woman and like, she has been so screwed over by humanity. You know, she has like fallen through the cracks and not been cared for and humanity has failed her. Of course she's going to want connection, a literal hand feeding.

• 1:04:00Sarah Marshall?

  Well, let's be honest, like what human being, maybe there are people who who don't and God bless them. But like what human being doesn't secretly want a special connection with a wild animal? You know, like even if you know all about how dangerous that is and how it, you know, it's going to be harmful to them in the end. Like I say, I think that it's because there's something in us that, or at least a lot of us that we just wants that.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Totally. And like, and then it's this painful thing where I kind of talked about the the cycle of emotions or how this is an invisibility where like the emotion, like her yearning for some kind of connection. Then it's like the opposite of trying to kill just makes them come back. Trying to connect in the end made this creature more aggressive, start to attack and then made us attack and then have to kill Carl and then Carl got killed.

• 1:04:51Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  Coyotes are both caught in the crosshairs of like our perception of them changes their reality so much.

• 1:04:59Sarah Marshall?

  We invent these stories that we want animals to be inside of and then they suffer because of it. And I think one of the things that bothers me most and like keeps me up at night is like when people create little like photo shoots or and maybe AI will actually reduce the need for this. But like, you know, videos of an animal that's allegedly doing something cute, but is if you know the behavior of that animal, like clearly. Distressed and it's being read as cuteness or like they've got props or something or like the, remember the slow loris video?

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:05:33Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my God. There was like this whole thing where like there's this, I don't know, it's not a marsupial, but it's, I don't know, it's like, it's like a bush baby or it's bush baby adjacent.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:05:43Sarah Marshall?

  But this like cute little guy with big eyes called the slow loris. And there was like this super viral video like 15 years ago that I think has actually pretty much been wiped from the internet because of how much exotic animal trafficking is encouraged.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:58Sarah Marshall?

  And it's like this animal that shouldn't be a pet, like has needs that like a human being can't meet and certainly not just like a regular old human with an apartment and a cage. And it was like this moment that went viral that caused them to, you know, that caused a lot of animals to suffer simply for being too cute for us to be able to resist projecting our ideas onto. And the idea on the video is that like this, it's so cute because it keeps raising its arms. When this woman is like scratching him and then he'll like lower his arms and then raise them again because he wants more scratches, but he doesn't because that animal has like glands underneath their arms that they use to like create a self defensive spray.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  Oh, that's heartbreaking. It's like just our misinterpretation, like our objection just slathers it so fully. You don't see that it's in distress and.

• 1:06:52Sarah Marshall?

  Like something that really bothers me is generally is like animal behavior being read as something other than it is so that humans can complete an agenda that involves like sentimentalizing the animal, but really just treating it as an object in our own fantasy and in a way that makes it disposable.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and you're right. It's like the sentiment sentimentalization is as dangerous as the vilification, I think.

• 1:07:14Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, that's really good. Yeah, I think so.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  And I think we really see that on the coyote. And I think also because it is so as like indigenous people have said for thousands of years, it is so shape shifty.

• 1:07:27Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Uh, and it is this interesting refraction of us because like they were here, they coexisted with indigenous people in nice populations. We settled, we brought our livestock, we tried to kill them. There were more and more of them. We tried even harder to kill them. We developed poisons that wrought havoc on the whole world, you know, the whole ecology. We. Finally dialed back that poisons, they stayed, they eventually learned how to thrive in our cities, which is not actually the Aldi thing. And then those of us who loved them, like, there's problems with people who feed them, who leave, you know, meat out for them, or like, who hand feed them. And then that makes them aggressive, makes us attack them, attack, and makes us kill them. And where they're just like, they're both locked in a tango with us, but they're also not, they're thriving, they're in the

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  shadows. And I think they're this, this, you know, good sized predator that has figured out how to thrive in the kind of rough and tumble, extreme environment that very few animals can, which is our cities and our worlds. And, and that excites me, that excites me about them.

• 1:08:26Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, that sort of survival part of them that we admire, I think, I don't know, I find it heartening, anything that we, when we admire it, we're admiring something in ourselves that we deserve to embrace, which is just our ability to adapt and to figure it out and to go on living and to love life, not because we get to fit into a certain identity, or because we get to be pack hunters, or we get to do whatever, but just because, like, it's really nice to live. It's nice to like, wake up another day and figure out what you're gonna do this time to make it through. It would be nice to not, you know, be, be poisoned, but, yeah, most of the time, you know, ideally, most of the time, that won't be happening. And it's just like the daily figuring out how to be a coyote

• 1:09:10Sarah Marshall?

  having it all in Chicago.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that, okay, I mean, again, don't project, see the animal, but if we want to project, I do think, like, in a moment of duress, like, follow the coyote, be flexible, lean into your meso predator, like, let your anxiety serve you. And, and, you know, bob and weave and slither around the threats and, and get creative, eat an avocado.

• 1:09:36Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Pair up with an unexpected friend, make friends with a bagger, get on the max, whatever. Yeah. And there's like a joy in figuring out what actually works for you. And, and also through survival, maybe finding conditions that you thrive more under than you did with whatever you were doing last. I think there's like a, a big human attachment to the idea of having a plan. And it's like, you don't have to have a plan, to quote Phoebe Buffay, I don't even have a plot.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  I don't even have a plot. But thank you. I just, I love listening to you and it's such a treat to come and get to gab with you.

• 1:10:15Sarah Marshall?

  I love listening to you too. And well, tell us where else we can find you and what are you doing lately? Have you written any fun children's book or anything?

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  I have written a children's book called Truckee Roads.

• 1:10:26Sarah Marshall?

  Best title.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Come try out Radiolab if you used to listen but left, come back. We are, I'm so proud of the stuff we're doing there and some of it is very, you're wrong about it, Jason. We have.

• 1:10:36Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  We actually just did a rethink of Stockholm, which I know you've covered, but we did a different take where Sarah Karyar, reporter, interviewed a bunch of people involved and actually just won a

• 1:10:46Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Just won a award for it. And I'm forgetting which award, but an award, just won a big award for it. And, and then also I would love if you, if you come listen to Terrestrials. It is a show about nature. It is family friendly, but it, and it's on the Radiolab for Kids feed, which might sound like a deterrent, but we don't talk down. It's really for all ages. The dream is that we kind of engineered it to try to feel like a Pixar film in that it's fun for all ages. There's little winks to adults. And really, it's just like, if you're interested in nature, every episode is about something that is true, that really happened and kind of like this, but with less swear words and, you know, shows you that this planet is still wilder than you think.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  There are more possibilities than you think. And it's, it's really my creative baby at the moment. So come, come along and listen. I would love it if people checked it out.

• 1:11:37Sarah Marshall?

  And Lily, just thank you for everything. And I know that when we talk next, you will have done more, just, I don't know, more questioning and exploring. And I can't wait to talk with you about whatever we talk about next.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Well, see you soon.

• 1:11:51Sarah Marshall?

  Yay.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:12:05Speaker 02

  The deeper thing was about how our relationships with these animals and how we interact with them can trickle down into things that eventually get those animals killed. Looking at where the attractants are in the city feeds into the one health thing because there are so many neighborhoods that have been systemically disadvantaged through things like redlining that have fewer municipal services, more pollutants and, quote unquote, pest species, and might be attracting coyotes because of these attractants. But then those coyotes also might be more exposed to things like pollutants and like kind of getting into the nitty gritty of the spatial ecology of an urban coyote and where it thrives versus where it doesn't and where it gets bolder versus where it

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  doesn't, et cetera, is sort of the next component, as well as with hyenas and the other species that I study.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  And then I guess like last question for now, I mean, when you've, when that cycle of kind of chain reactions, these linkages, when it, when you eventually learned about the woman who was hand feeding the coyote, was there a like, ah, like, a sense of like, even if you didn't know her story, like, an imagined sense of why someone unhoused and screwed over by human, the human world, like, why she would want to connect with a coyote in that way? Like, was there a sense of recognition?

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we all want to connect, right? And, and so that's, that, that need for connection is gonna be even more when you are someone who doesn't have other connections or, and/or who has been systemically disadvantaged by society. You know, San Francisco has a huge inequality problem because of all the gentrification and the tech boom and all of that. And there are a lot of people suffering from homelessness that are constantly both villainized and also, you know, ticketed and all these things and dealing with a lot of Issues that are very much based in like societal ills and societal systemic

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  problems that go back many, many, many years. So in my mind, Carl, to some degree, is not just a product of the need for human connection in nature. It's also a product of all of these systemic issues that you see in places, you see more starkly in places like cities.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  I don't know. I just think about the kid, the 11-year-old you who's still so shy, who's trying to catch a squirrel, who's trying to touch a squirrel and not quite succeeding. But man, if she did, would probably be feeding them from her hand. Like, who maybe wasn't being failed in the same way, who wasn't unhoused, but like, wasn't loving the human world and was finding something in these cicadas or these squirrels. Like, do you see yourself in that gesture? And is it so easy to just say, like, hurting humans, don't take comfort in that? Like?

• 1:15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do see myself in it. And honestly, like, any wildlife biologist will tell you that there is still, even though they're doing science and they're permitted and they're doing it ethically, when they handle animals, there is still something that is achieved in connecting with that animal to do the science, like with your hands.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  And that's our episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Lulu Miller. And once again, the clip that you just heard is Lulu Miller interviewing Dr. Christine E. Welkerson. And thank you, Dr. Welkerson, so much for your work, too. Thank you to Miranda Zickler for editing. Thank you to Carolyn Kendrick for editing and producing. And thank you to the four or five coyotes who are probably looking at me right now.