May 1, 2021
Farmers from Dedham first settled Medfield in 1949, only 29 years after the Mayflower landed. The colony had grown rapidly through immigration and reproduction after 1630, and in William S. Tilden’s History of Medfield, the population was reported as 18,000 in 1643. The influx forced settlers to look west for grazing land for cattle and other farm animals.
According to Tilden, “wolves and wild-cats infested the region, and their revels much annoyed the early settlers at night,” especially when they killed the settlers’ young cattle and other livestock. Wolves commonly weigh over 80 pounds, and a hungry wolf can eat 10 pounds in a meal.
The problem quickly led the early selectmen to pay a bounty on wolves, sometimes running as high as two pounds sterling. That was a lot of money then, and enterprising young men would sometimes recycle a wolf’s head and collect multiple bounties on the same dead wolf.
Though fearsome, wolves almost never attacked humans. Nonetheless, as they were hunted down and came to fear humans, their numbers declined. Wolves were given protection under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and though their numbers have rebounded, they are mostly found in the upper Midwest and Rocky Mountains.
A close relative of the wolf (canis lupus) is the coyote (canis latrans), which is much more common in New England. (Man’s best friend is canis lupus familiaris.)
Once rare, in the last 50 years, coyotes have become a familiar sight in Medfield and elsewhere in the suburbs, as developers have encroached on their habitat.
Coyotes are a revolutionary story of survival, an animal with a thousand faces and capable of adapting to a thousand ecological places. In the process coyotes have encountered a very generous people who throw out edible food every day, even finding some food that’s high in protein thrown out in composts and neighborhood dumpsters.
At times coyotes have been known to raid the supple watermelons and potatoes as well as any other fruits and vegetables that might appeal to them. All that good food augments their usual diet of mice, squirrels, raccoons, possums, berries, roadkill, insects, and any other small animals. It’s no wonder that coyotes stay in Medfield.
As of this writing it is fair to say that Massachusetts is home to thousands of coyotes. In Medfield, Hospital Road is a favorite stomping ground for the coyotes, where they blend in with all the foliage in the warm weather. There’s plenty of open space that quickly turns soon enough into heavily overgrown bramble bushes, especially 200 yards before reaching the railroads tracks before Route 27. After all, they’re on state property where the signs remind people, No Trespassing. This Eden forest is also home to the abundant deer population. Sometimes the coyotes can’t resist the impulse to run along with the deer at a speed of 40 miles an hour!
Compliments of the natural wildlife, most everyone will be seeing some of the coyotes that have mated with dogs, more affectionately called coydogs. Perhaps it was inevitable that the two canine species would merge either by destiny or natural selection. Either way, we now have coyotes that look like they mated with a German shepherd.
Nowadays many people will get to see how some coyotes have one marking of that dog breed. The top of the back of some coyotes has what is called a black saddle, where the fur appears much darker. Last fall of 2020, a young female coydog was seen toward the end of Hospital Road while walking into a gully. Four or five cars stopped to get a good look at the lissome coydog while she briskly walked further into the thicket of brush and pine trees. She looked at the cars that were stopped and didn’t seem threatened by all the attention of the spectators in their parked cars, while leaving their engines running.
However, most of the coyotes seen are typical of the gray, scruffy looking coyotes that could really use a good grooming, especially in the summer months when they are shedding clumps of fur that hang from their neck and underside.
There was a female coyote citing near West Street about a hundred yards down, well before reaching the animal hospital. This coyote had run into a small group of young female deer but quickly realized she was outnumbered and outmatched in terms of speed.
At one other location on Farm Street, a very healthy looking, male coyote with immense shoulders that looked like the broad shoulders of a dominate male coyote. That coyote had just taken down a Canadian goose after sharing a wild turkey with another female coyote eating and swallowing bits of meat to later regurgitate the food for her young pups when returning to them. Evidently, the pack mentality has prevailed while sharing their food. Seems as though the omnivorous coyote population is keeping the abundant aviary population in check whenever possible.
Everyone has a story to tell about coyotes. Their incredible skills have confounded many wildlife biologists. There has been much said about coyotes attacking domesticated pets. That’s a reality that pet owners should be aware of. Although there’s no consolation, a coyote will attack only one small animal. A large pet dog will kill as many small animals and pets as it can catch, like rabbits, chickens and even much smaller dog breeds. That’s what a large dog’s DNA and behavior calls for most often when the dog has not been raised with other small animals.
Coyotes are very shy and elusive when they suddenly see people. They will make eye contact, but they are usually in a hurry to leave the scene.
If there were no coyotes, there would be no way at all to control the smaller animal population that make up a coyote’s diet. The coyotes control the rodent population and many of the smaller wild animals that can overrun the environment. In particular, raccoons, skunks and opossums are frequently seen in the summer months and mostly give birth in the warm weather. It’s such an enlightening and pleasing sight to see a raccoon mother leading her litter of newborn kits from under a car to an open lawn. Opossums are more prevalent at night and really can “play dead” when attacked by a hungry pet cat. Groundhogs are often in evidence in the summer. They’ll find and use any secret opening they can as long as they can easily enter and leave whenever they feel safe. Rabbits and squirrels become numerous, and they can sometimes overpopulate. If that happens, coyotes will hunt them and keep those populations controlled.
Coyotes keep a wary eye out for their predators like black bears, wolves, and mountain lions. But by living in the northeast coyotes remain fortunate as those assailants are not at all dug in, other than an occasional black bear that rarely shows up in Massachusetts towns in the northwest region of the state, eventually to be relocated to a more suitable bear-friendly habitat.
We know that coyotes are here in Medfield, so bring your dogs and cats into your home at night for safety. Coyotes are here to stay; that’s why residents have to remain vigilant, but also tolerant of these creatures. If coyotes were completely wiped out, we would have more fisher cats and more rodents feeding on the corn and other grains. Skunks, if approachable, would be plentiful, as well as raccoons, and opossums that can somehow end up living beneath our houses. That’s not a pleasant thought, while those people who find them despicable might take an active role in removing them either by themselves or with an exterminator.
In the spirit of truce, some Medfield residents have figured, If you can’t beat them, then feed them. Some families have concluded that if they put food out, the coyotes will eat the food decoy and thus leave their pets alone. That idea has taken on a whole new meaning with town residents who might have farm animals and a field of vegetables. Putting out meat-bone scraps along with other food waste beyond its expiration date like bread helps to distract and maintain the coyotes in balance with interdependence. Gathering fallen apples and other fruits will detour and satisfy the most cunning of coyotes.
On the plus side, those foods that have been thrown out just might attract some of the wild prey that coyotes like to catch and feed on. This is a practical measure far better than putting up an electric wire fence costing a fair amount of money. A more preventive enterprise would be to put up a six-foot fence in height with a depth of five inches into the ground. That could be a win win solution for all.
Linda Cain, who lives on Pleasant Street, heard a racket going on at the back of her garage. She saw two young coyotes that had removed bungee cords to get into some large metal trash cans. Linda found the scene amusing without any reservation. Linda has a laissez-faire attitude toward coyotes. She’s advocating that people should leave the process to nature.
Another nearby family close to Linda was raising rabbits in hutches five feet above the ground for the children of the family. Two German shepherds invaded the yard and attacked the hutches. The two dogs were able poke their noses clear beyond the wire door and grab the children’s favorite rabbit – a beautiful, golden, four-month old that the young daughter had purchased at a pet shop at the Walpole Mall. The dogs pulled the rabbit out of the hutch and killed the animal quickly and left it on the ground dead. Those two dogs also tried to invade the other two hutches but were unable to.
The moral of the story was that dogs will kill as many smaller animals as they can. That is their breeding and nature passed down from thousands of years. Coyotes on the other hand will only take one small creature and then move on to either consume or share and feed it to their litter of young pups.
Nobody is advocating that coyotes should be allowed to run free. Nor does anybody want them to be treated as vermin and eradicated throughout the wooded areas of our town. Somehow there must be a balance. Many people will say that those animals were here first and deserve the right to co-exist peacefully. Coyotes are the most successful breed of animal that has managed to remain and prosper in the 2021. In many ways coyotes are like the canine version of a superhero, that does heroic deeds for the welfare of their families. Coyotes have had the ability to accomplish what a normal canine couldn’t. They have accomplished a mystical power that is more exceptional than any other wild animal could possess.