Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History by Dan Flores
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Fascinating, Appalling, Comical, Triumphant Book Dan Flores’ Coyote America: A Natural and a Supernatural History (2016) is a mostly fascinating and often devastating or funny account of the most impressive all-American canine predator the coyote. The fascinating parts concern the unique survivability, intelligence, problem solving ability, and individuality of the coyote. The devastating parts depict the excessive ongoing 100+ year “ideological” attempts by ranchers and the US government to eradicate the animal by any means necessary (including trapping, shooting, dynamiting, poisoning, and chemical and biological warfare). The funny parts happen when Flores recounts contemporary real life coyote stories or retells Native American Old Man Coyote stories. The core of Flores’ book is that the adaptable and intelligent critters resemble us (“coyote history mirrors human history enough that” they become our alter egos) and that they are uniquely American animals that symbolize America as its avatars. His book begins by introducing the coyote and its interesting nature and history. It then provides chapters covering the Native American view of and history with the coyote (including creating the oldest deity in North America, Old Man Coyote), the changing impressions of the Europeans and explorers and naturalists of the new USA of coyotes from neutral and or positive to negative, the origins and development of the “war on wild things” undertaken by the USA from the 19th century till now, the rise of the bio-centric ecological movement in the 1960s, the colonization of cities across America by coyotes, and the ways in which coyotes are natural agents of healthy hybridization. The book ends with a neat epilogue covering “coyote consciousness” or “coyote-ism” (based on using intelligence and wits to survive, on exulting in sheer aliveness, on recognizing our shortcomings with rueful chagrin, on seeing ourselves with truth) in American popular culture (including the Warner Brothers’ Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons) and highbrow literature (including the work of poets like Gary Snyder). Before reading this book, I hadn’t known any of the following: that a coyote female can bear anywhere from two to nineteen pups in a litter, depending on the overall population of coyotes in her area, which is one reason why despite (or because of?) killing hundreds of thousands of coyotes per year, the government and ranching interests have never succeeded in reducing their overall population; that coyotes have colonized every US state (including major metropolises) apart from Hawaii; that they’ve long been living in human cities (at least as far back as the Aztecs); that today every American lives within one mile of at least one coyote; that they can live alone or in groups; that whether you say the name of the animal with three syllables or two denotes whether you like them or hate them; that Mark Twain helped start the negative image of coyotes (sickly, sneaking, ravenous, cowardly, contemptible) while Walt Disney helped popularize the positive image of them (intelligent, interesting, persecuted); that Chuck Jones’ Wile E. Coyote became a parody of the American over-reliance on quick technological fixes; and more. Elijah Alexander is a capable, professional, clear reader. I liked his reading of Jack Vance’s Planet of Adventure. And he’s fine here, but slightly succumbs to what some listening readers (like me) might find a distracting and unnecessary attempt to imbue French, Spanish, German, or British, historical figures quoted by Flores with various accents. At one point he even assumes a stage voice for President Nixon that sounds nothing like the guy. If I have a criticism of the book it is that although Flores does plenty with the Native American view of coyotes and of Old Man Coyote and plenty with the development of the persecution of the animal and with the coyote's growing support in recent decades, I’d have liked even more real life coyote stories, more accounts of their biology and ways of life and antics and families and pup rearing and solo and group hunting and so on. Flores wholly succeeds in convincing this reader (admittedly already a lover of wolves and wild things) that the government and ranching interests should stop waging an amoral and useless war against the coyote, that instead the coyote should be celebrated as a uniquely successful wild predator who doubles as an avatar of America and of humanity. I love the last sentence of his book about the true national anthem of America: yipping coyote song that’s been heard on the continent for half a million years. Anyone who likes wild animals and nature and has an open mind should enjoy and learn from this book; anyone who thinks coyotes (pronounced with two syllables) are pests worthy only of total extermination should probably avoid it. View all my reviews
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Jefferson Peters
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