Coyote at the Kitchen Door

We have a few coyote in the Williamsburg area. See the article I wrote last year for Suite.101 when I was doing a bit of research in order to write up something for New Quarter Park staff and visitors.The staff tells me there are two families of coyote in the park this year. And a friend who lives in a very nice new neighborhood in the city told me that her husband saw a coyote on their street fade into the woods beside College Creek.

So when I saw the recently published book Coyote at the Kitchen Door: Living with Wildlife in Suburbia by Stephen DeStefano, I snapped it up to learn more.

The book is very personal, really. The author writes in the first person and I certainly understand his emotion, as will most environmentally-literate readers. He sprinkles information and philosophy between the lines of everyday life and relationships. His knowledge of the environment causes him not to fit in well with those who live without that vocabulary, blissfully unaware, and although I'm not a biologists, I am empathetic.

He gets angry when he sees suburbia encroaching, trees falling. We are too many and it shouldn't be a big surprise that we see more and more wildlife as we build more and more housing developments where there once was forest. And now, the wildlife are getting pretty used to us. Canada Geese and White-tailed Deer are domesticated. Coyote and bears tolerate our presence and scavenge our yard, formerly their woods.

Toward the end of the book DeStefano spends a bit more time talking up the need for a paradigm shift. We need to change the way we look at the world and think about our relationship to other living things, an idea posited by other scientists and humanists as well. He talks about how much effort we put into the care and upkeep of our homes and reflects that, "I just wish we all could carry the passion and love and care that we show for the buildings in which we live to the land and air and water that surround and support them. I wish our nation as a whole had the same This Old House kind of enthusiasm for the natural environment that we have for the built environment. It is every bit as important to your immediate well-being as paying the mortgage and keeping water out of the basement. Without all the things the earth provides, the place in which you live will no longer be the sweet and comforting place you know as home. The real estate agents are wrong: your house is only your second biggest investment in your life. Your environment is your first."

The last chapter hearkens back to Aldo Leopold. As I read this I remembered reading A Sand County Almanac when I was writing Waterfront Property. The land ethic. Yes. It was my environmental epiphany. I used the same quote: "We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." And in addition, "That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics."

Interspersed with the author's philosophical musings are short clips of fiction from the coyote's point of view that he weaves into the non-fictional setting: his Massachusetts neighborhood and region. DeStefano transitions, and the reader knows that the coyote is always nearby. 

One final thing: I like a passage he wrote about driving and thinking on an autumn day that I thought was artful, albeit melancholy. I've shared it here:

"I drive along, watching the weather and the rural scenery--letting my mind roam. Something about this time of year always sets me to thinking, especially when I am driving or hiking around. It's the dichotomy: it is chilly and kind of gray and gloomy, yet beautiful, quite and peaceful. It has the feel of the year's closing down, yet the world seems to open up. You can see far into the forest and the view of the sky is virtually unimpeded now that all the herbaceous growth is gone and the leaves are down . . . I drive, thinking about some of the same old things. I am  fully ensconced in my mid-fifties now and wondering how I got here so fast."

Reminds me of my last drive along the Colonial Parkway . . . where the coyote are always just out of sight.