WESTFORD — Have you noticed an increase in coyote sightings recently? The Massachusetts Department of Fisheries and Wildlife recently announced that this time of year is peak mating season for coyotes, meaning that the likelihood to encounter a coyote is higher than average.
According to state wildlife officials, late January through early March is mating season. Coyotes are active during the winter when courting mates and defending their territory.
Coyotes are found in every city and town in mainland Massachusetts, including Westford, meaning that the opportunity for human-coyote interaction is high.
However, people should remember that a coyote sighting should not always be a cause for concern, even during the daytime.
In order to help residents minimize bad encounters with coyotes, state wildlife officials released a list of steps for residents to take.
These include, protecting pets by keeping them supervised or on a leash outdoors, removing human-associated food sources from your property and “hazing” a coyote if you see one — by creating loud noises, yelling or using a small air horn, waving a jacket overhead to look bigger, spraying a hose or throwing small objects in the coyote’s direction and physically chasing and driving the coyote of until it has left the area.
A Storied History
The coyote is the most American of canines. All members of that family, including wolves, dogs, foxes and raccoon dogs, descend from a common North American ancestor. The difference is that their evolutionary path included time in Eurasia. The coyote never left. The gray wolf, for example, evolved into a large, highly social predator of large-hoofed mammals on the Asian steppes, returning to North America only 20,000 years ago. When the first Europeans ventured into the old-growth forests of the East Coast and heard the wolf’s howl, they may have felt a chill run up their spines, but it was a familiar chill. Thousands of years of living together embedded the wolf in the European mind through mythology, folktales and idioms. Romulus and Remus. Little Red Riding Hood. The wolf at the door.
When explorers Lewis and Clarke encountered the coyote as their route through the Eastern forest opened into the Great Plains, they thought it was some type of fox. They eventually settled on “Priari Wolf” (prairie wolf), a name that was still heard in the West through the first half of the 20th century. “Coyote” comes from the Aztec coyotl via Spanish. Mark Twain popularized the name and established the animal’s bad reputation in 1872’s Roughing It.
