February 8, 2015

2-8-15
Since I've been drawing animals that frequent urban areas, I had to draw a coyote. 

Coyotes are so successfully adaptable that they live in all of the U.S., Mexico, all the way to Panama and parts of Canada.There are 19 subspecies of coyotes as they have evolved to adapt their environment. They are will eat vertebrates and invertebrates, everything from bugs to sheep, fruit and some vegetation. 

Fay, my sister, and I used to see then all of the time when we rode our bikes. A pack of them would follow us when we rode at night. They ran away when we turned our heads with lamps on our helmets to shine a light on them. 

They are very social. The coyote pack is centered around a reproductive female and once she mates with a male they stay together for life. They are monogamous and the male stays around to help feed and raise the cubs. 

I had friends who lived in a log house in Acton, in Southern California. They had 60 acres in the middle of nowhere and had coyotes around all of the time. They told me that the coyotes would send a female in heat to lure the male dogs out and the female coyotes would mate and them kill the dogs. There are lots of coyote-dog hybrids and wolf-coyote hybrids called coywolfs. Both hybrids are larger than coyotes. I saw a huge one once after a ride with Fay in the Santa Monica Mountains, near Topanga Canyon. It was bigger than a German Shepard and maybe almost as large as my Great Dane that I have now. It's bushy tail was long as it's body. It was probably not a coywolf, but a coyote dog hybrid.  

When I lived in Granada Hills, a coyote was killing my neighbor's chickens and then my ducks in the back yard. We had a six foot fence, but that's nothing to a coyote that seems to be able to run up the almost vertical side of a trail when we would surprise them while riding our mountain bikes. When I did see the coyote, it was really small, about the size of a beagle, running down the middle of a busy street. Animal Control in the L.A. area say that there are coyotes all over Los Angeles. They travel unseen along the storm drains and waterways. 

I drew this one with no vegetation around it since they can live anywhere and are so adaptable.