DON COYOTE 151 



squirrels in check, the country would long ago 

 have been overrun with these troublesome 

 rodents. Few of the ranchers who rail at the 

 coyote for his raids on their chicken coops and 

 vineyards realize what value he is to them. 

 The few hens and grapes he takes are small pay 

 for the number of destructive, grain-eating 

 rodents he annually destroys. Last autumn, 

 when I journeyed one very early morning 

 through a little mountain village where the 

 settlers were clearing land and raising their 

 first crops, and counted the jack rabbits in some 

 of the fields, I found sixty- two, in one instance, 

 on an acre plot of corn. It did not surprise 

 me that there was little worry expressed in 

 the neighborhood over the toils attending the 

 coming harvest season. The rabbits had taken 

 everything. These same settlers had carried 

 on for some time a consistent and continuous 

 campaign of coyote trapping and this plague 

 of rabbits was the result. They must now as- 

 sume the burden of controlling the rabbits by 

 themselves at cost of time, labor, and money, to 

 say nothing of the loss of crops in the mean- 

 time. "Civilized man has [often] proceeded 



