**Warning: Death, Guns, Wildlife in Distress**
5-minute read
This year on the summer solstice I happened upon two coyote pups, nestled together under a bush on the back acres, hopelessly stuck in the tar.
I was there to witness the plight of the stuck coyote pups because of a trail that I had decided to build and maintain during the first months of covid. The mile-long path visits interesting features on the land, including the tar-scape—a fascinating volcano-like ecosystem, where naturally-seeping tar, both hardened and running, intermixes with water, and trees and plants thrive in the black, hydrocarbon-rich soil.
We’d explore there as kids, often finding skeletons of reptiles, raptors, rodents, and bobcats, some of them engaged with each other in a struggle to mutually assured death. The La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles—a scaled-up version of my own tarry landscape, approximately 50 miles away—is the richest paleontological site on Earth for terrestrial fossils of the late Quaternary age. Some 4,000 dire wolves have been exhumed from the tar there, many of which probably died while preying on other animals stuck in the tar. Like the dire wolves, our water-loving border collie, Rizzo, disappeared years ago and was reportedly seen submerging in a pool of tar by a neighbor on horseback.
I had been listening to a podcast about Pleistocene child rearing, while doing a last-minute sprucing up of the looping single-track path with a mechanical string trimmer before my sister and niece arrived from Texas to visit, when I heard faint cries over the sound of my two-stroke engine and stories of flintknapping ice age kids. After removing my hearing protection and shutting down the weed whacker to listen, I heard the cry again and noticed movement from beneath a flowering yellow broom in my peripheral vision. Unsure of what I would find, I began recording as I approached the bush.
The young coyotes’ situation was one of unimaginable suffering. One pup’s entire body was sunk in, all fours, body, and head, mired in the viscous black liquid, hyperventilating in the hot afternoon sun on the longest day of the year. A second pup, whose cries had alerted me to their presence, had just its head free.
Yellow jackets and flies were attacking the flesh where the tar had burned away the coyotes’ skin. One pup had gnawed away at its leg in a desperate attempt to self-amputate. A clump of maggots was already wriggling around where the flies had laid their eggs at least a full day earlier, and a low-flying kettle of vultures was circling above. I kept checking nervously behind me in case the coyote parents and their pack were keeping an eye on their stuck pups.
I immediately felt and understood my responsibility to the two coyotes, the service that only a human could provide to fellow creatures in distress; mercy.
After calls to a local vet and biologist friend went unanswered, I knew the decision was mine alone to make, so I began the half-mile run in my boots and overalls back to the house to get a gun. After some fussing with locks and keys, I opted for the .38 revolver. I grabbed a couple of extra rounds, just in case.
I hustled back up the single-track path and arrived at the miserable scene. With shaking hands and a dry mouth, I loaded four rounds into the revolver and said a quick prayer. I drew the muzzle right up to the skull of the hyperventilating pup and pulled the trigger. The shot rang out through the canyon. I shifted my aim to the other pup and pulled the trigger. The pup howled. Bright red blood flowed into the black tar. I shot again. Still alive. I fired a third time. The pup whimpered. Still, its diaphragm expanded and contracted, somehow clinging to life. Then I noticed the first coyote pup was still breathing too.
“Oh no, oh no, fuck, no.”
I fell into a shameful kaleidoscope of guilt for not bringing more rounds and exacerbating their suffering. I phoned my brother, who’d just arrived with my sister and niece from LAX, and instructed him to grab the box of ammunition and start running up the hill as I began a mad sprint back down the trail.
When I returned their breathing labored on. One sorrowful shot each finally ended it. I watched the life leave each of their little bodies as they relaxed into the tar. Together they lay in a heart shape in the blackness, facing each other, their noses almost touching. I stayed on my knees, gun in hand, and fell into a ball of tears.
Death, and taking life, have always been part of growing up on this land. But ending the lives of those coyote siblings, even in an act of mercy, was the most difficult I’ve faced. How they survived the first four shots I don’t know. I’ve heard similar stories of extraordinary and inexplicable survival, with wild pigs and Orwell’s elephant. These accounts helped me forgive myself for my attempted mercy.
It’s curious how taking life impacts us differently depending on the species and the context. I often have a hard time pruning a tree’s limbs, let alone cutting one down. What about a spider in the shower? A gopher eating the garden? A lion that’s eaten your goat? Taking a life can be easy and without an afterthought. Taking life can be hard and make you hate yourself. The circumstances dictate the impact the take has on us. What I had to do for my solstice coyote pups was right, it was horrific, and I’ll never forget them.
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