Yer tryin' to eat me, eh?

January 4, 2011 6:06 PM

Coyote repeatedly attacks a Canadian's boot (only because his stuff from ACME hasn't arrived yet). SLYT; 4.55
posted by bwg (57 comments total)

So what's all this, a boot?
posted by hal9k at 6:09 PM on January 4, 2011 [34 favorites]

Only a Canadian can make "motherfucker" sound friendly.
posted by peeedro at 6:13 PM on January 4, 2011 [8 favorites]

This man... this man is not a smart man.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:13 PM on January 4, 2011 [11 favorites]

hal9k: "So what's all this, a boot"

If you listen closely he never says aboot. More like: "Get oat!"
posted by bwg at 6:18 PM on January 4, 2011 [3 favorites]

This is how it all starts, then BAM: 10,000 years later you got pugs.
posted by chairface at 6:25 PM on January 4, 2011 [54 favorites]

He keeps saying stay away, and sounding angry, but he's obviously playing with the animal. He called to it, initiated a game of chase, and then was surprised when it played with him?
posted by agentofselection at 6:25 PM on January 4, 2011 [3 favorites]

That is one gorgeous coat. (I guess I'm used to the scraggly-ass coyotes in Utah.)
posted by notsnot at 6:28 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, that answer the "how do you know he's Canadian" question.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:36 PM on January 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

I can't tell what the Coyote's motives are. Is it playing? Is it trying to attack him for food? Is it rabid? It's not barking or snarling, which are signs of aggression I'd associate with a dog. Anyone know a little about coyotes and able to shed some light?
posted by codacorolla at 6:38 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

That looks like play behavior more than anything to me - I'd guess it's a coyote that's really used to people and know they sometimes have food, but doesn't think they are food. And wow, it really is pretty.
posted by restless_nomad at 6:41 PM on January 4, 2011 [6 favorites]

Nice day, eh, Sam? Yep. Good to be alive, Ralph.
posted by maudlin at 6:43 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

That's a pretty well-fed healthy young coyote there. I'm guessing he or she is playing/testing as much as the guy with the boot is.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:44 PM on January 4, 2011

This is why you should always take a walking stick with you. Only takes two canines (even badly trained pets) to make a pack, and bite your ass.
posted by anthill at 6:54 PM on January 4, 2011

Ya know if it wasnt a coyote, you'd think all he wants to to is play
posted by MrLint at 6:59 PM on January 4, 2011

I can't tell what the Coyote's motives are. Is it playing?

Yeah, I see what looks like your basic dog "play bow" posture multiple times during the first minute or so.
posted by mediareport at 7:01 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

He keeps saying stay away, and sounding angry, but he's obviously playing with the animal. He called to it, initiated a game of chase, and then was surprised when it played with him?

It didn't look like play to me - it looked pretty threatening. These things can kill.
posted by KokuRyu at 7:07 PM on January 4, 2011

The man is definitely sending some mixed signals to the animal.
posted by exogenous at 7:09 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

It didn't look like play to me - it looked pretty threatening. These things can kill.

Yeah, the whole time I was watching this I was thinking about the poor woman those coyotes killed in Cape Breton. A cute, playful predator is still a predator.
posted by showmethecalvino at 7:25 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

If he understood animals, he would have slapped the coyote right in the nose. Now this thing thinks it's totally safe to approach humans and munch at their toes.
posted by cman at 7:27 PM on January 4, 2011 [3 favorites]

Definitely playing, but a coyote's idea of "play" is like a bear or tiger's idea of "play" in that it can be pretty dangerous to a human. The coyote wasn't trying to hurt the guy, but that doesn't mean the guy couldn't have gotten awfully hurt.

That said, I've played with coyotes here in southern California, and that coyote attack in Cape Breton was a one-in-a-million encounter (on top of which, it's likely that the woman wasn't killed by coyotes at all, but crossbred coywolves, which are much more dangerous and unpredictable than your average coyote).
posted by infinitywaltz at 7:32 PM on January 4, 2011 [6 favorites]

He's trying to eat me, eh?
posted by Brocktoon at 7:39 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Obligatory: I like America, and America likes me
posted by Sreiny at 7:40 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

As someone with friends in Northern Alberta, I am shocked that he didn't shoot the bugger.
posted by PinkMoose at 7:50 PM on January 4, 2011

Obviously the coyote was miffed that the guy wasn't taking his boots off in his turf.
posted by Stormfeather at 8:19 PM on January 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

When he turns around, you can see the camp he's working out of. He's probably a logger or brusher or burner or some other silviculture sort of guy. Not much else happens in Northern B.C.

PinkMoose: "As someone with friends in Northern Alberta, I am shocked that he didn't shoot the bugger."

As someone who worked in Northern B.C., I'm surprised they shoot coyotes on sight in Alberta. It's us who walked into their home, not the other way around. The ideal solution and what usually happens is you make the animal find a new home. If it gets harassed every time it shows up, it will eventually stop showing up. If that doesn't work, forcible relocation is possible. Set up a trap or tranquilize the thing and drop it on the other side of a river. Killing is usually the last resort.

We had a black bear around our camp that wouldn't go away and after it snuck in one night and broke open all our beer trying to get our food, we had it relocated.
posted by battlebison at 8:23 PM on January 4, 2011 [3 favorites]

He called the nearby trailer "his trailer." I get the impression he has been around this particular coyote many times, and just decided to record it one day.
posted by Quonab at 8:24 PM on January 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

i was chased last winter by a coyote on my bike on a commute back to portland from hillsboro. this was up on skyline, right where thompson crosses over skyline/the ridge of the hills. i'd stop there to have a sip of water or a banana or shed or put on layers, etc. i'd seen coyotes up there before and i'm told there are just loads of them in forest park (and after this i heard of mountain lion/cyclist encounters in the park too). anyway, one evening i stop and am gonna put my rain jacket on before my downhill into nw portland and there was a coyote on the edge of the woods. instead of it sitting there checking me out like usual it bolted for me so i started pedaling my ass off, shouting and making the wrong turn on thompson, heading back downhill to the west side (not portland). and that fucker followed me for way too long. my heart was pounding and my legs were rubber. this dude handled his encounter way better than i did mine. i am so not tough.
posted by rainperimeter at 9:02 PM on January 4, 2011

I am jealous of this "attack"!
posted by troublewithwolves at 9:04 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

I just kept waiting for the real attack to come from the side. Clever girl....
posted by PercussivePaul at 9:15 PM on January 4, 2011 [13 favorites]

Coyotes have a wide range, eat calves and lambs, and are mostly a nuisance, like mice or magpies.
posted by PinkMoose at 9:22 PM on January 4, 2011

The coyote is attracted to the sound the boot is making in the snow. If you listen closely, you can hear a little 'squeak' not unlike a small rodent.
posted by chevyvan at 9:36 PM on January 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

This was my favorite part, when the coyote jumps back twelve fucking feet with the weightless nimble step of a ballerina, as if it doesn't even faze them... just playing... just jumping the entire fucking length of your car, backwards because it's fun.
posted by inedible at 9:44 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

so wolves are canis lupis, dogs are canis lupis familiaris, and coyote's are canis latrans, and the dire wolf was obviously canis dirus. They can all interbread (except for the extinct direwolf). This is confusing if you have ideas about species not being able to reproduce, but don't be too worried because defining what a species is has confused biologists since at least Darwin. This can tell you more about the problem with defining species.
posted by garlic at 10:02 PM on January 4, 2011

Dances with Coyotes
posted by bwg at 10:40 PM on January 4, 2011

This man... this man is not a smart man.

this is an outake from a new Werner Herzog film right?
posted by ennui.bz at 10:45 PM on January 4, 2011

reminds me of this.
posted by marvin at 11:42 PM on January 4, 2011

This coyote seemed weirdly tame -- certainly like he was just playing with the guy, and expecting him to play back. The bit at 4.03 where it's gnawing on his boot and he says, "you can't hurt me, motherfucker," (in the friendliest tone ever, btw) and the coyote sort of jumps back and perks up its ears -- seemed almost human. I wonder if it's interacted with other dogs from the compound the guy seems to be headed toward.
posted by wandering steve at 12:32 AM on January 5, 2011

I'm not an expert in animal behaviour but I've seen more aggressive pet hamsters. This coyote looks like a candidate for the doggification process.
posted by elgilito at 4:07 AM on January 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

I hope there aren't toddlers around that settlement... that looked awfully predatory to me. Beautiful though eh?
posted by Erasmouse at 4:18 AM on January 5, 2011

The first time I saw a coyote on the streets of DC, I was riding with my then it's-complicated at night, I was simultaneously thrilled and a little nervous. The coyote was just cantering along, right down the center of the road, as if it owned the place, and at first, I was worried it was a loose dog that was at risk of being hit by a car. Then, it went all low and slingy like someone had just wound up its rubber band and shot off down a side street like something from a nature documentary.

"Holy crap, I think that's a coyote!"

"There's no coyotes in Maryland," said It's-Complicated, rolling his eyes.

Naturally, back at the man cave, I hit the internet. Yep, there's a growing colony of coyotes in Rock Creek Park, something that fills me with almost endless joy. I tell stories, so being surrounded by the almost invisible presence of the legendary trickster is pretty cool. Besides, this was a parking lot, now it's nothing but flowers.

So the tricksters fan out, and the Norway rats drop their lutefisk and rush for the drainpipes. We think we're so other than all this, but the trickster coyote flows in the blood. Our little overbred darlings flop around the house, gnawing the furniture, and we're mad, because we harbor the mistaken belief that we've beaten the wildness out of them. On the couch, our cats kick at us, holding our fluffy sweaters while their hind legs perform all the requisite actions of disembowelment. There's still a killer inside all our lovable pups, and our weiner dogs were bred to kill badgers, for pete's sake.

On those sneaky days when I conspire to bring my dogs to work, my Napoleon-scaled beagle lives in the world of Baltimore stink, nose-down and oinking like a little floppy-eared pig. Daisy, my Carolina Dog mix, is a stone primitive, an evolutionary throwback, and her ancient instincts are more present in her. She sits up in her place next to my desk and yodels at me that she's bored. We leash up and head out for the alleys of the West Side.

You don't even notice the movement. There's just a skreeek and then she's laying yet another rat carcass at my feet.

"Jesus, Daisy, where do you keep catching these things?"

Lou sniffs at the rat, but I kick it away, under the dumpster. He's disappointed.

"I'm glad y'all are on my side," I add, and resolve not to keep cutting through the alley, where there are so many little victims cringing before the little brown wolves that come walking with their naked ape. That world seems so different, but it's closer than we think.

I scritch my natural murderer's ears, just like she likes it, and we head back to work.
posted by sonascope at 4:51 AM on January 5, 2011 [13 favorites]

sonascope - there are Coyotes in The Bronx!

As wolves become more and more extirpated, so it goes Coyotes more habituated to humans are re-colonizing the East.

and yeah, they can kill in the 'burbs.
posted by xetere at 6:34 AM on January 5, 2011

Mixed messages indeed. Everytime the guy said, "Hey!" the coyote apparently thought that he was saying, "Play!" So he did.
posted by leftcoastbob at 8:39 AM on January 5, 2011

That coyote does not act aggressively. It is playing. Of course, its a coyote, so 'playing' could be deadly to this guy.

He's a moron. He called out to the coyote, he kept saying 'c'mere', and kept playing with something that, while friendly (judging by its body language) could still do a hell of a lot of harm. And could have turned aggressive at any moment.

Still, I'm glad both of them walked away. Its a beautiful animal.
posted by sandraregina at 9:15 AM on January 5, 2011

he also says "that's my dog" at one point, and the animal also wags its tail early on in the video. Pretty critter, a lot better looking than the one in my neighborhood.
posted by mwhybark at 9:26 AM on January 5, 2011

It didn't look like play to me - it looked pretty threatening.

KokuRyu, know how I know you don't have dogs? (Or aren't any good at reading them?)

1. Play bows. (This alone proves the canis was playing.)
2. Fur unruffled.
3. Ears up, not pinned.
4. Tail straight back, not dropped.
5. No teeth baring (visible teeth doesn't count, the animal will retract its gums).
6. Shoulders eased, not rigid.
7. No threat vocalizations (barks, yips, nor growls).

These things can kill.

So can my dog (who is likely bigger than this coyote by 5-10#). But if I filmed him doing exactly the same thing, you'd read him as being cute & playful. You're being fooled by the species, and the narration.

Final proof:
8. If the coyote was wild, the guy would have had some real concern when it began nipping at him, and had a harder time keeping such a nice frame on his attacker.

As fake as a Disney nature film.
posted by IAmBroom at 10:12 AM on January 5, 2011 [5 favorites]

And, to people who keep pointing out coyotes can kill... you're omitting the key phrase "children, the infirmed, and the very elderly." I'm not sure they've ever taken down a full-grown, able-bodied human, nor would a lone coyote believe this is a sensible thing to do.

Bite, and spread rabies, sure. But let's not glurge this up with exaggerated claims.
posted by IAmBroom at 10:14 AM on January 5, 2011

That looked like play to me, but as others have said, a predator like that plays rough. I wonder if someone else had fed that coyote before.
posted by homunculus at 10:19 AM on January 5, 2011

This looked to me like someone playing with a tame (tame-ish?) coyote or even coyote cross, with narrative provided to make it seem like not-play.

That canine looks a lot larger and heavier than coyotes I've seen locally, which I'm told are quite well-fed and which I have observed are quite confident. Is is really a coyote, and not, say, a coydog? Someone's pet?
posted by galadriel at 10:52 AM on January 5, 2011

KokuRyu, know how I know you don't have dogs? (Or aren't any good at reading them?)
You know, if you want me to take what you're saying seriously, you need to drop the condescending, arrogant tone. It's a serious turnoff, and I really doubt you know what you're talking about.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:08 AM on January 5, 2011

On the body language: exactly what IAmBroom said. There's no malice in that animal.

Yes, it's still a hunter. But its teeth are no sharper nor longer than those of the collies across my street, and to be honest it's probably at least as intelligent as they. It knows there are better things to eat than humans. And it is not a hunter only; there's a reason Coyote got the job of Trickster in all the old stories. It's in its nature to play. My one concern would be that it is a wild animal and hasn't had its rabies shots—but a rabid animal could not dance like that.

On a related note, Metafilter's own loquacious has been very close to coyotes himself.
posted by eritain at 11:30 AM on January 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

You know, not that I'm inclined to ramble off in some tangential direction or anything, but the suggestion that that coyote could kill reminds me of vicious animal attack I once suffered that makes me inclined to believe that, yes, even that cute li'l fella could kill.

It was the decade before last. I was still a second shift guy, sitting at my film inspection table with the fluorescent light from the lightbox making me look fat, hand-cranking my way through miles of diazo microfilm duplicates with my densitometer, a loupe, and a keen eye for the flaws you might find in a roll of diazo film. I'd get off at 1:30 in the morning, bleary-eyed and half-blind from eight hours of one-eyed inspections, gather up my stuff, and walk ten blocks home.

One moonless night, I'd just stepped out of the building and out of the pool of mercury lighting, into near darkness, and my eyes hadn't quite refocused. Suddenly, something bit me on the ankle. Didn't draw blood, or even dislodge my sock, but it came back for another bite and another. I looked around, couldn't see a thing. Whatever it was, it would jump out from under the row of parked cars, bite me, and disappear back under there. I picked up my pace, and the bites increased.

"What the hell is biting me!?" I said aloud.

Nip, nip, nip.

I started doing a little dance, trying to dodge the invisible biter. There'd be a little flash of shadow, and another nip, another little pinchy feeling. I wondered if I was having some sort of stroke or seizure, but the little anomaly just kept getting me, again and again, in the same places, where were getting increasingly sore. I was starting to look like Kathleen Turner dodging a fake rapist, or at least I would have, if you could have seen me in the dark.

I took off running, but I was out of shape. The shadow kept on.

Nip, nip, nip.

Finally, I'd had it. Eventually, I'd get an abrasion from all the nipping, and you can get rabies through an abrasion, you know. I jumped onto the bumper of a parked pickup truck, then into the bed. Naturally, it had an alarm, which blared. A guy charged out of his house, annoyingly fast, hollering at me.

"What the hell are you doing in my fucking truck!"

"Hey, man, I'm sorry! There's some animal down here biting the shit out of me and I was trying to get away from it!"

The guy looked around, squinted, then reached down and picked up, one-handed, a tiny miniature dachshund, all black, except around the snout and paws. Approximately one million years of embarrassment flew by, compressed into an instant. It was still dark, but I didn't doubt I would have been bright red.

"This dog? You jumped into my truck running away from this dog?"

The dog was scarcely bigger than an actual hot dog, it seemed, which amused the guy to no end.

"It was biting me," I said, in a very small voice.

"Yeah, I'll be that hurt," he said, and laughed.

"It just kept biting me. Like a hundred times. It really hurt."

I was telegraphic, fragmentary. I climbed out of the truck. The guy kept laughing.

"I'll hold onto this little guy so you can get home safely, dude."

"Umm, thanks."

I slunk home. The next night, I took a different route home, and did so for a week. It wasn't because of the dachshund menace of Laurel Avenue, per se, but you never know. Hell, I could have been a hemophiliac, or made of bologna. There's such a think as death by a thousand cuts, I hear, so I only had about nine hundred more bites left before my gruesome death, and that damn weiner dog seemed awfully determined.

You can't be too careful these days.
posted by sonascope at 1:38 PM on January 5, 2011 [9 favorites]

True "coyotes" are small (about 35 pounds, cocker spaniel sized) and their teeth are small and weakly set in the jaw, like a fox. This is what you see mostly west of the Mississippi and they aren't going to kill you one bit. Mice and cats are more their speed. There are "coyotes" on the East Coast that have quite a bit of wolf in them (up to 90% in some that have been sampled in Maine) due to cross breeding as coyotes have migrated eastwards in the last century. Those are bigger, stronger and have much stronger bites and are interested in preying on larger mammals. I don't know what kind of coyotes they have in Alberta but if they're similar to southwest coyotes you're pretty safe in terms of having one rip your leg off.

Coyotes also like to follow behind people, it doesn't mean they're going to attack, they just like to trail you out of their territory.
posted by fshgrl at 9:03 PM on January 5, 2011

Why on earth would you hold your bare hand out at snout level and make encouraging noises to a totally unfamiliar beast? Looks like to me that this silly man has hand-fed this animal before. Yes, I believe that coyotes can, and do, kill humans on occasion (perhaps even in my own back yard!) but this gorgeous guy is clearly playing, and seems sort of confused as to why cameradude is all "come 'ere, go away!" on him.
posted by thebrokedown at 9:22 PM on January 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

I doubt this guy has fed the coyote before but someone has. You see coyotes like this all over CA in parks and places where city folk come and feed the wildlife for kicks.

It's much more entertaining if it's a bear doing that of course.
posted by fshgrl at 10:10 PM on January 5, 2011

Yeah, there are the little coyotes, the ones who howl picturesquely at a New Mexican moon - and then there are the big mamma-jammas. Bigger-than-a-german-shepherd big, powerfully built - more wolf than 'yote. We had both kinds frequent our backyard when we lived in North Kingston, which is all of 20 minutes south of Providence.

Also, wild turkeys and fisher cats!
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:03 AM on January 7, 2011

KokuRyu, I apologize for my "condescending, arrogant tone." It is "a serious turnoff," and weakened my points.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:51 AM on January 10, 2011

But its teeth are no sharper nor longer than those of the collies across my street, and to be honest it's probably at least as intelligent as they.

eritain, domestication reduces brain size, so the coyote is very likely more intelligent than those collies. (Think about it... which is a tougher brain problem: wagging your tail for dinner scraps, or hunting down prey and fending off larger predators?)

... Which only makes your points more valid.
posted by IAmBroom at 7:18 PM on January 10, 2011