The Howler: The Dog Who Joined a Coyote Pack
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From WNYC. Three, two, one. Imagine you are one of the least wild animals there is. You're known for curling up at people's feet, playing fetch, obeying commands, and even wearing sweaters.

But beyond the fenced-in yard where you spend your days... There is a long-lost cousin of sorts. It's like a wilder version of you. What is that? Another dog? He calls to you. So you jump the fence and run. And as your paws kick up clouds of dust, you think about all the human beings who've tried to keep you two apart. They said there's no way you could survive this friendship. But... They are wrong.

You have become the dog who ran away and joined a coyote pack. Quack, quack, quack, quack.

And now is the part where I make you sing the theme song with me. Oh my gosh. Terrestrials, terrestrials. We are not the worst, we are the best. Bestrials. Yeah, you got it. Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness. Waiting right here on Earth, I am your host, Lili Miller. Joined as always by my song bud. Here to croon. Alan. And howl at the moon. Wow.

And here to tell us the absolutely true fairy tale of the dog who ran away and joined a coyote pack is... Christine Wilkinson. Christine Wilkinson is a conservation scientist who often goes by the name Scrappy Naturalist because she loves creatures that are a little more, uh... Scrappy.

Like hyenas that rip into rotting corpses. And rats. Raccoons. Baboons. Jackals. Opossums. One of the scrappiest out there, in my opinion. With their little naked tail. And seagulls. Rats of the sky, as people like to call them.

And I did have like a gull throw up an entire hot dog on my head once. So like, they're not wrong. And these days she's spending lots of her time getting up close with one of the most reviled creatures of North America, the hot-breathed, blood-thirsty, slobbering predator that writer Mark Twain once called evil-eyed. Coyotes. Oh,

Coyotes have a bad rap for good reason. Coyotes will eat sheep sometimes, or maybe calves. Or sometimes pets. So warning, I need to say a sad thing. It's going to take about 30 seconds. But when I was growing up, my family dog, he was a little white terrier named Charlie. And when he was 13 years old, a pack of wild coyotes got him. Oh no. Oh no.

Yeah, it was awful. And the morning after it happened, my mom, trying to make me and my sisters feel better, said, well, look, maybe he didn't get eaten by the coyote pack. Maybe he went off and joined them. Maybe he did, Lulu. I know, it's absurd. Can you imagine? Well, I did imagine him all the time, like his proud, tiny little white chest with a pack of big coyotes behind him. Kind of cute. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. But I figured that was a joke, something that could never happen. Until I heard about a dog named Hades. Yeah. Yeah.

So this tale begins on the outskirts of Las Vegas, baby. The Nevada desert all around. A little white puppy with some black spots in his ear is born and adopted by a family with two kids who name him Hades. And one day, when he was a few years old, he jumped the fence and he disappeared.

and the family didn't know what happened to him. A month went by, and another, and another, and they were so sad, they had pretty much lost hope, until one night, the mom saw Hades...

on the news. Tonight, an unusual story of survival. Two coyotes running down the street in Henderson. Nothing too unusual about that, but pay close attention to the last of the pack. That is not a coyote. It is a white dog. It turned out that whole time, Hades had been running with the coyotes. Here he is, captured on a trail cam. For almost seven months, it seemed, he was sleeping with them, hunting with them, howling with them. Woof!

But after all that time, Hades was looking a little weak. So he was rescued and brought home to his family. I started crying right away. We had tears. We had laughs. And they couldn't believe their puppy had been able to survive in the wild for over half a year. You...

But the part I couldn't believe is that the coyotes did not eat him. That seemed totally counter to their bloodthirsty, ferocious, evil-eyed reputation.

Um, not, not really. But Christine was not surprised in the least. She said that friendliness is classic coyote behavior. Honestly, like of all of the coyote partnerships that I've heard of with different species, dogs surprised me the least. Wait, there are other partnerships? Yeah. Like who? Should we just list them out? Yes.

We have seen the badger-coyote relationship. What? Christine explained that a few years back, a big old coyote and a little badger were caught on video trotting together, like buddies, through a tunnel. So this coyote was kind of going along and looking back to wait for its badger friend who was lumbering along. They're like, making my way downtown. But that's so puzzling to me, because a coyote could maybe eat a badger, right? I mean, yes, but badgers are pretty fierce. Yeah.

Not only do they have super sharp teeth, the badger can do something the coyote can't. They are tenacious diggers. Badgers can flush out the prey. So when the two of them work together with the coyote sprinting... They can run up to 40 miles an hour. ...after a gopher, say, and the badger digging down into wherever the gopher tries to hide...

their kill rate goes up. We gotcha. And they've even been observed sharing the spoils. Go for a kebab. This relationship has been documented by Indigenous folks for a long time. It's just like getting all this press now because we've actually caught it on camera. Indigenous stories going back for thousands of years talk about the coyote like a kind of shapeshifter that will befriend all different kinds of animals. And these days, scientific research is catching up. We

have seen raccoon-coyote relationships. Two trash goblins going to town. Coyotes and ravens. What's a coyote doing with a raven? What's that buddy comedy all about? Coyotes and ravens can basically help each other to find food. Dead food. The coyote has learned to follow the raven as it flies toward a rotting carcass somewhere. And the raven will clean up the leftovers after the coyote's done. And the

And the cross-species friendships don't stop there. Coyotes have been seen palling up to cows. Ooh, bears. What? And even the arch nemesis of all dogs. Cats. Meow. And bobcats. Bigger meow!

That's right, there's a story of a coyote puppy befriending a bobcat kitten in Wildlife Rescue. The puppy was the runt of the litter and she was getting bullied a lot by her siblings. And so they found her a playmate, which was a bobcat kitten. And they hit it off. They began playing together, rolling around, tugging on each other's ears. Play is actually a way of social learning, how to be with one another, how to exist in society.

Actually, on that note, Christine explained that this friendliness, this willingness to roll with all kinds of different creatures, it is just one example of this broader thing about coyotes, a kind of overlooked, scrappy superpower, what scientists call behavioral flexibility. Behavioral flexibility. Not the best at anything, okay, at lots of things. Behavioral flexibility.

They're flexible, able to behave in all kinds of different ways, which as an animal is kind of a weird superpower because usually we admire a creature for being specialized, being the best at one thing like cheetahs who can run the fastest or giraffes who have the longest necks. But coyotes, they

they find their power in being precisely the opposite. Not the best at anything, but absolutely okay at lots of things. And this behavioral flexibility extends beyond not just who they'll be friends with,

But also, what they'll eat for food. From insects to fruits to deer and avocados and trash. Don't forget trash. What time they go to bed. They are actually active at all times of the day. They're flexible in how they hunt. They either go solo or pairs or packs. And even where they live. While many creatures are specialized for one type of environment, coyotes are not picky. They'll live in forests, grasslands, deserts, cold places, hot places. Yeah, deserts.

and even the landscape where very few wild creatures can survive.

human cities. They can subsist anywhere. Even in Chicago, where I live? Yeah. All right. Well, after the break, I am going to head out into the land of steel skyscrapers that is Chicago, Illinois, to see if I can actually find some of these supposed urban coyotes. Whoa, I'm actually feeling a little nervous right now. Stick with us. If you dare.

Ever feel like those fables and fairy tales from back in the day are just a little bit dusty? Wondry and Tinkercast are bringing you a podcast for the whole family, Once Upon a Beat, that remixes folktales as old as time, giving them a fresh spin so they have rhythm and rhyme. It's hosted by me, DJ Fuge, and my trusty turntable, Baby Scratch. Where hip-hop and fables meet, it's Once Upon a Beat.

The sun is low in the sky. It's not that bright yet. And I am heading into a graveyard. This is Terrestrials. And we are walking into a dim cemetery right at dawn to search for ghosts. Okay, so we're walking by some little graves right now. The living ghosts of Chicago. The supposedly bustling population of wild coyotes that lurk among us.

There's a well-known statue here that looks sort of like...

the Grim Reaper. Ooh. And it's kind of creepy. Leading me to this huge, creepy grave inside Graceland Cemetery is Robert Lorazel, a journalist and photographer with a knack for snapping pictures of wildlife. The urban legend is that if you look into the eyes of this sculpture, you will see a vision of your own death. Oh, scary. And when Robert first looked into the eyes of this statue, he

He saw not his death, but... I just happened to notice that there was a coyote sort of creeping toward me. And he was freaked out. God, there's a coyote here. We look around, but don't see one here today. So he leads me to a back corner of the cemetery. You'll see them. Sometimes the coyotes will be along here. And I have to admit, I was starting to feel a little spooked. There have been a couple of times here at Grayson Cemetery where...

I've seen a coyote and I'm trying to follow where it's going and I look there and it's like gone. And I'm like, where did it go? It was like magic. According to scientists, there are somewhere between two and four thousand coyotes lurking in Chicago. Suddenly, a four-legged creature starts walking toward us.

But it's just a big dog being walked by its human. Can I ask you a question? Have you ever seen a coyote in this graveyard? Yeah, one actually. He ran into my dog. Like, I didn't even see him coming. Was it terrifying? I mean, after that, I started carrying a stick around. Oh.

And it turns out the reason I feel so spooked right now is also the key to why coyotes have been able to do so well in the city. It's that scrappy, overlooked, boringly named superpower. Behavioral flexibility. They're flexible, which means they are also unpredictable. They might be in a friendly mood or they might be aggressive.

They might be alone, or they might be in a big pack, which makes them hard to pin down, like real-life ghosts, shapeshifters. It was like magic. But it also makes them wildly successful. Woof, woof, woof.

Robert told me stories of packs of coyotes going after squirrels in broad daylight and lone coyotes creeping through alleyways to gorge themselves on trash. Coyotes riding city trains, walking into grocery stores. Where's your frozen meat section? And one time... A coyote walked into a Quiznos sandwich restaurant. Really? And it was just sitting there, you know. Waiting for us up.

It's like they've cracked our code. They know where we stash our food, how to open our trash cans, and even how to navigate the maze of dangerous streets. Scientists have observed the coyotes obeying traffic signals. No. Waiting for a green light. Really? Yeah. And before they cross? Yeah. But probably the most important trick coyotes have learned to survive the city is to hide from us. We haven't seen one yet, but do you think there's any chance they've seen us? Yeah. Yeah.

Robert's guess is that even though coyotes could attack us, and to be clear, from time to time they do, they've learned that the less they bother us, the safer they are. That's one of the cool things about them, just thinking they might be watching. As we walked around for hours, I couldn't help but feel like there were eyes on us.

And I started to feel on a visceral body level something that Christine had told me about why coyotes were able to survive something that killed off nearly all the wolves in the U.S. So picture, if you will, in your mind's eye, the Wild West of the U.S. back about 200 years ago when it was still wild. Can you see it? Sagebrush.

and thousands of coyotes and wolves running, hunting, and howling at the moon until European settlers came out.

They set up farms with big meaty cows and pigs and, well, the coyotes and wolves couldn't resist attacking these new juicy snacks. So the farmers, along with the U.S. government, decided, let's kill them all off. With rifles. Shoot on sight. Pew! And poisons. Oh, sad. And, well, this extermination campaign, it worked.

When it came to wolves, anyway. Right. After about 150 years, the gray wolf population in the U.S. was completely gone. No howls in the trees, just silence. But the coyotes survived. Some people even called them unkillable.

And Christine thinks that their unkillability, their ability to outlast the wolf who needs its wolf pack to hunt with, was due to that easy-to-overlook scrappy trait. Behavioral flexibility! Not the best at anything! Okay, yeah, lots of things!

They can hunt in a pack, but they'll also scavenge solo. Wolves aren't out there eating alicatos. But coyotes are, and they're not afraid to stoop to eating trash or to roll with friends in low places. Arf! If it means getting a leg up, I'm not getting snuffed out. Arf! And... Oh! Oh!

Oh, there's a coyote. Snapping to attention back in the graveyard where Robert and I are sitting on a little wall when suddenly a literal gravedigger walks up to us to let us know we are being watched. We just saw him. He was like over kind of on the top of the hill. Oh, by a coyote. Oh, I see him. I see him. I see him. Oh, I see him. He's standing on a grave. Do you see him?

Okay, do you see him? He's right there. He's right there. He's turning his head. Oh, my God. He's moving. He just got off the grave. Oh, there he is. Okay, that's a coyote. He's beautiful. He's just chilling. He's like light, light gray on top. He's running across...

The grass. I can't even say words because he's so pretty and I'm so excited. He just wagged his tail. Yeah, it kind of looks like he's wagging his tail, but he's not wagging it for human attention. No. There's another one. That's a different one. There's three. They're just doing their thing. They're running through the shadows. And then without warning, they disappear. I'm

Freaking out. Three of them in a pack just like running away. Are you glad? Yes, I feel like the day is blessed. And they looked real happy. They looked healthy. As we walk out, I cannot wipe the smile off my face. I feel charged. Alive. And Robert tells me this is a feeling he sometimes gets. He lives just a few blocks away from the cemetery. And every now and then at night, he hears howls. Howls.

What does that make you feel when you, like for real, when you hear that? It's hard to put my finger on it exactly. I think people like me find some comfort in the fact that wildlife has managed to prosper in spite of humans and what we are doing to the world. That we've still allowed some space for it to exist. Seeing the coyotes in the light that day, out of the shadows,

I could see them more completely, not only as the vicious things of my imagination, but as the sometimes playful, flexible souls they are, doing what they need to survive. Which means there is a chance, a statistically very unlikely but still not zero-sized chance, that my dog Charlie did join the pack.

And as for Hades, the dog who we know joined a coyote pack for over half a year, well, his family told us that once he came home, though he loved all the comforts of cuddles from the kids and plenty of dog food, they said he still hasn't completely shaken his wildness. And sometimes at night, as the moon rises, he'll howl. You know who can howl too? You.

It's the howl of mediocrity. It's the howl of flexibility. It's the howl of mediocrity. It's the howl of flexibility. Always have to

the best at something. Sometimes it's just fine to be pretty okay at lots of stuff. Don't have to be biggest. Don't have to be the toughest. If you've got flexibility, buddy, you've got enough. It's the howl of flexibility. I'm hungry. I could go for a gopher or a pigeon. A crit or a rabbit. I will eat if I can grab it. What if

Grab it cause it's running way too fast I'll just jump in the dumpster and smash some trash Is that chicken bones? Bon appetit Delightful Gummy Would you like a new rotten burger? It's the mediocrity It's the howl of flexibility It's the howl of flexibility So hot We're friends and embrace mediocrity Even if your song doesn't rhyme

All of the words. Ah-woo! Ah-woo! Ah-woo!

Ellen Goffitski, everybody. Ellen, you could have just said even if your song doesn't rhyme all of the time. Good enough. And that is it. There's no more cool howling. No more cool stories about to come. What's that? Excuse me. I have a question. Me too. Me three. Me four. The Batters.

Listeners, measuring questions for the expert. Are you ready? Okay. My name is Link. I am eight years old. Do coyotes ever actually howl at the moon? I do not know if we know the answer to that question, but they do howl not just for communication. Sometimes they howl just for funsies. Just for pleasure? So they can be singing for the sake of it. So we don't know if they howl at the moon, but if a moon was up and they're just howling for fun, they're at least howling with the moon? Toward the moon.

In the vicinity of the moon. Don't mind me over here just howling in the vicinity of the moon. For sure. Hi, my name is Walter. I am seven. Does coyote eat whatever they find? If they do, I will be so amazed and I'm going to go crazy.

Well, get ready to go crazy because they do eat kind of anything that they find. It's true. So like veggies, dairy. Yeah, exactly. And I do know that they have been documented in wine country eating the grapes as well. Little vineyard thieves. Do you think there's anything they wouldn't eat? Poisonous things, things with pepper on them, spicy food. Like you're not going to have it eating like one of those triple fire Taco Bell packs. Most excellent. More for me. Yeah.

My name is Sanai. I'm 12 years old. Are there any creatures that eat coyotes? There are lots of larger carnivores that have been known to eat coyotes. For example, pumas, wolves, bears, and even golden eagles. Wait, sorry, you just said eagle could eat a coyote? Yeah, golden eagles. They're enormous, and coyotes are not that big. How do they get them? Swoop down with their talons and scoop them up. And then, like...

Eat them. Okay. Hi, my name is Alice. I'm 10 years old. And my question about coyotes is what's the difference between a coyote and a wolf? Well, there are so many differences. Wolves are significantly larger than coyotes. Okay. So they have like a lot bigger paws, usually twice the size of a coyote paw. Wow. Coyotes have this like longer, narrower snout and these pointier ears. Okay, so coyotes pointier, wolves beefier. Yeah. Okay.

My name is Ruby. I'm seven. And my question is, is it true that coyote pee makes bears go away from their habitat?

I believe it is quite unlikely that coyote pee makes bears go away. But there is some evidence that wolf pee might make bears go away from their habitats. Oh, wow. Does anyone sell wolf pee to keep bears away at campsites? Yes, there is wolf pee for sale on the Internet right now. There's also coyote pee if you're interested. I thought I was making a joke. No, every single one of us can purchase wolf pee and coyote pee. That's right, folks. Urine.

Luck.

All right. I think that is the best place to leave it. Terrestrials was created by me, Lulu Miller, with WNYC Studios. Our executive producer is Sarah Sambach. This episode was produced by Ana Gonzalez and Mira Birtwintonic. Our team also includes Alan Gofinski, Tanya Chawla, Natalia Ramirez, and Joe Plourd. Fact-checking by Natalie Middleton. Oh! Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. Thank you!

Big shout out to our storytellers, Christine Wilkinson. You can watch her really cool coyote videos and so much more at scrappynaturalist.com.

And Robert Lorazel, who snaps the most incredible photos of wildlife in the city of Chicago. You will not believe the beasts that live among us, from coyotes to foxes to hawks to eagles. He's over at Robert Lorazel, that's L-O-E-R-Z-A-L, on all the social media. Also, if you want to see some other videos, maybe less...

and elegant and maybe just a little more silly, follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Terrestrials Podcast. And if you have your grown-up, follow us right now. You will also see instructions for how to win free merch, free Terrestrials merch, such as a poster signed by me. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok. You'll see at Terrestrials Podcast.

And finally, this is our last episode of season three. And so a big from all of us here at terrestrials. Thank you so much for listening. We truly make this for you and happy to report that another season is coming in the fall. And over the summer, we've got some special treats releasing. So keep on listening to the radio lab for kids feed and,

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And that is it. That was a lot of words for the two of you still here. We will all see you in a couple of spins of this dirty old planet of ours.