"Slow news week—let's go with our cat-predation package!"
I'll confess that I have not read the story in its entirety (still working my way through last week's Economist ("World on the edge") and just loaded up with this week's ("Saving the system"), and maybe it turns into a work of reportage that would make Joseph Mitchell and Hunter S. Thompson cry . . . but it appears to be all about how people who live in this one heavily-wooded greenbelt area tend to have a lot of cats go missing at the hands (paws? jaws?) of coyotes. With all due respect, WHO CARES?!?! It's hard to think of a more trivial story, or a week when it would seem more incongruous for it to show up on the front page of any publication.
Here's a classic bit from the story. I will let you find the authorial/editorial self indulgence that is in the finest tradition of Seattle alternative journalism, while I note a problem with the "scientific" explanation being put forward:
A 2004 paper authored by Russell Link, an urban wildlife biologist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), seconds Convy's notion. "In Washington," Link writes, "these intelligent and adaptable animals now manage to occupy almost every conceivable habitat type, from open ranch country to densely forested areas to downtown waterfront."Now, I could be wrong, but I doubt coyotes are picky eaters. They are not sitting around nibbling buttered scones and tut-tutting that these churlish cat-things are apt to put a dent in the population of delicious rabbits. I'm sure the coyotes are killing the cats in order to eat the cats [cue Schwarzenegger Terminator voice: "I would."]. It's also a rather poor evolutionary strategy for predators to pick fights with other predators in order to keep them from competing. That's like getting in a knife fight with the next person in the interview line at Wal-Mart: not worth it from a risk or energy-expenditure perspective—just try to do a little better in the interview. Also, I'm confident that cats are not "thought of by coyotes as a competitor for prey." Do you really think a coyote has the slightest idea of what a cat does or doesn't do vis-à-vis the coyote's prey (besides simply being it)? It seems unlikely. Plainly, the benefit package at the Department of Fish and Wildlife is not attracting the cream of our biology graduates.
And occasionally, they like to eat pussy.
"Cats are thought of by coyotes as a competitor for prey," says Link. "A coyote is going to eliminate that competition."
Labels: local Seattle media, mocking others, pets, things that seem stupid to MWR (abridged version)
posted at 9:35 PM
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