Animals I Work With - Coyote

Thank you all!

I can't say all that I'd like to quite yet, but these are gorgeous animals! Thank you for sharing them. That fox too, little Fred, is adorable.

A wolf at the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota also had a beige nose, but his was due to discoid lupus, an autoimmune disease. As an aside, thats a great website and youtube channel to check out if anyone is interested.

Saarlooswolfhound wrote:

A wolf at the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota also had a beige nose, but his was due to discoid lupus, an autoimmune disease. As an aside, thats a great website and youtube channel to check out if anyone is interested.

That's interesting, color anomalies are always fascinating.

Our other canid is a coyote (Canis latrans). Beatrice, or Bea, was orphaned with her brother in 2006. They were brought to the Nature Center by someone who found them, and both were hand reared by staff. They were imprinted on people, but were still dangerous to have free contact with. Only those keepers who had been directly involved with their raising could work in the habitat with them. Bea is pretty friendly when you are on the other side of the fence, though--she lets us apply medication (sometimes) and pull shedding fur off in the summer. She comes up to the fence and rubs against it to get us to scratch her.
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Barney, Bea's brother, passed away a number of years ago. Bea is too old to have another coyote introduced with her, especially since she is imprinted, so she will live out her life with keepers as company. Usually this is a concern for a pack animal, but Bea has adjusted just fine. She is very attached to her human keepers--and she is also very old and mostly likes just lying in the sun anyway!
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Coyotes are considered naturalized in North Carolina, not true natives but moved in naturally when large predators like wolves and cougars were extirpated. They are incredible urban adapters and have a thriving population here. A wild family of them even lived in the woods next to our facility and raised a large litter of pups. We will not, however, get more coyotes after Bea passes. Even though there are many of them wild in the area, they are rarely brought to wildlife rehabilitators and because they are considered rabies vectors in the state of North Carolina, only certain rehabbers can even take them. So the options for unreleasable coyotes that need a home are not many, and it is not an animal many other facilities have, so no one is breeding them or has extras that need space.
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Here are some old photos of Barney. As and adult, he became very aloof, unlike Bea. He acted much more like a regular coyote, while Bea was clearly imprinted. They were surprisingly easy to tell apart, mostly by eye color (Bea has very light yellow-green eyes, and Barney had brown), but also by coat color. The are pretty small, only about 30 pounds.
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Bea especially is gorgeous! In my hometown we had a similar small zoo that hosted local species (also rehabbed animals unfit for rerelease) for the publuc to learn about. There was a mated pair of coyotes (a nonreproducing couple) there I loved watching as I grew up.  A few years ago somehow during the night an unknown wild animal gained partial access to the enclosure (was able to get inside one fence of the coyote's double fenced enclosure... the male coyote, probably trying to protect territory, was savaged even through the fencing and had to be euthanized due to his injuries. His mate still lives there, a true aloof coyote whom only interacts with one or two keepers for company and generally is hard to spot by the public. Very similar situation to Bea here, if the events leading to it were different... Thank you for presenting her and Barney.