</font><font color="blue" class="small">( </font><font color="blueclass=small">( When times gettight they eat sweet corn and watermelons to. )</font>
I think most of us usually only think of coyotes as being carnivorous, but from the early '50s I remember a local newspaper story in a small town in Oklahoma warning kids against stealing watermelons, but also said that if you do steal one from the field, be sure it's attached to the vine because some farmers pulled watermelons off the vine, injected them with poison, and left them in the field for coyotes. )</font>
Coyotes, and most canids, are actually omnivorous. They prefer meat and need a lot of protein, but they will eat anything edible just like your pet dog will. I am going to have a pretty heavily electrified fence system around my veggie and fruit garden/orchard for this very reason.
Someone asked about Karen's ranch. It is in Norco, CA and it sat atop a small hill with ~10 or so acres. It might have been much more land at one point. Norco is an equestrian town (very very). The current owners totally remodeled the insides, but the exterior is reasonably original I am told. We only lived there 3 years and moved in to new construction on an acre in 2001.
The current owners import and train some extremely pricey horses. Extremely.
I didn't like the lady much, but the husband was very nice. I got a tour of the place only because I stopped by to ask him about his telescoping flag pole. We had a house atop the next hill over directly facing theirs. The owner's son thought our shar-pei lab mix was a beautiful dog.
That was where we lost a chihuahua to a coyote that snatched it from 5 feet away from our house that had lights on outside, and 2 other dogs (not the sharpei lab yet). It was a fearless pack and that was the pack the warden sent out a marksman out to thin.
Regarding kids and coyotes: The marksman found 2 full grown coyotes 75 yards away from 3 toddlers outside playing. The adult came and went and was generally not close enough to the toddlers to stop the coyotes if they went for it. The marksman said it was pretty disturbing and that had I not called it in, it might have been ugly. The coyotes SAW him with the silenced sniper rifle and didn't care. They were drawn up to 30 yds (they approached at a bad angle at first so he turned the puppy in distress recording down) when he dropped the first one, and tracked the other that ran back to the pack lair. The lair was strewn with literally hundreds of dog and cat remains. There was a lot of older chicken remains. The thought was that they easy-to-get chickens were gone and so they were stepping up their attacks.
I personally stood off with that coyote that took our dog on a different day for about 20 minutes. It seemed to think it had a chance with me. I threw rocks and yelled and it was not afraid. If I turned my back on it to walk up the hill, it started closing the gap. If I ran at it, it maintained the gap of about 40 yds or so. I would have liked to have beat it to death.
We had just moved in and hadn't gotten fencing up. The neighborhood had tight restrictions, so the fence was pretty expensive (concrete and iron) (think new car pricing - it hurts to think about).
Now I live in country. I am much happier with our current location even though I am not within 5 minutes of an In-N-Out.
