I was in the middle of working out some particularly knotty bits of writing my novels when sweet K-D doggie dropped a ball at my feet. Her message was loud and clear: it was time for a walk. A couple of blocks into our stroll, we encountered this hand-drawn sign stapled to a phone pole. Note the adorable drawings of “doggos” and “cats,” the encouragement to educate oneself under the attention-grabbing “Coyotes are Dangerous!” headline.
This is the adorable of neighborhood poster I encountered while walking my doggie, hand made by neighborly Girl Scouts.
The coyotes and humans of Los Angeles County make for troubled neighbors. On the one hand, coyotes were here first. The burgeoning number of humans has put a strain on the families of our four-legged population. On the other hand, the more desperate coyotes get for food and shelter, the bolder they become about snacking on small family pets. To their credit, they also munch on vermin such as rats and mice that spread nasty germs and dine on backyard gardens.
Intrigued, I tore a paper tag from the sign, which noted the sign makers’ website. As soon as I got back to my desktop computer, I looked up the “Coyote Crew.” According to their site, they’re on “a mission to safely and peacefully get coyotes out of your neighborhood.”
As it turns out, they’re Girl Scouts! First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt thought Girl Scouts were great. A video on Youtube from around 1937 shows her with an encampment of girls from all over the world. In her speech, she relays a greeting from her husband and urges them to “grasp every good time you can.”
Of course, I had to invite the Coyote Crew to introduce themselves here at Happiness Between Tails. That led me to research the Girl Scouts, given that I knew practically nothing about the organization.
When I was a kid, other than a bit of high school team swimming and water polo, I didn’t join groups because my family didn’t have much money. Also, contrary to a relative who’s forever tried to gaslight me, we moved around a lot. By the time I left home at eighteen, I’d lived in fifteen apartments and attended ten schools.
What I learned about the Girl Scouts is impressive! They’ve been around since 1912 and have been lauded by everyone, including President Barack Obama.
Moreover, they’ve repeatedly fended off groups that don’t want transgender girls to join. In one case, when a Bigoted Deep Pockets mailed them a check for $100,000 with the stipulation that they not help anyone who is transgender, the Girl Scouts mailed it back to them! Better yet, they collected $250,000 from people who were overjoyed by their intregrity!
The organization is big into teaching self-reliance and smarts, including when it comes to money. Their cookie selling is epic. Their aptly titled “The Cookies Are Here” commercial from 1976 is smart and funny. The way all kinds of people stash them in all sorts of unexpected places makes me want to run out and buy some…
Now, here are Ava and Jamie, the two Girl Scouts behind the sign my dog and I saw on that telephone pole, to tell us about their coyote awareness project project. They’ve put together a great website where they can emailed from…
Here’s a picture of a page on The Coyote Crew’s website.
“A Silver Award Project (But Socially Distanced)” By Jamie & Ava, members of The Girl Scouts and of The Coyote Crew
Hi, we’re The Coyote Crew, Bronze award and 500/1200 club Girl Scouts who have always fought for animal rights and against animal cruelty. Our journey with animal rights started when people close to us had their cats killed by a coyote, and we have been searching for ways to protect our neighborhood pets from coyotes ever since. About a year ago, we were faced with the challenge of coming up with a project to do for our Girl Scout Silver Award, and so the Coyote Crew was created! Our mission is to help inform people about the dangers of coyotes, and the fact that the coyotes need to be protected as well as our pets. It is our job as humans to keep our animals safe and keep ourselves safe from wildlife, while respecting the boundaries of wild animals, especially those who live around neighborhoods. This project will tell you a little bit about coyotes, how to keep your pets safe from them, why harming coyotes is a bad idea, and expose you to the personal lives of people living with coyotes practically next door to them through interviews.
Meet the Crew
Hi I’m Jamie. I have always loved animals, and after doing a research project on animal testing in fifth grade, I became passionate about animal rights. I joined PETA, and several other animal rights foundations and organizations and began buying cruelty free products. My extensive research on animal rights never touched the topic of coyotes, and although coyotes continued to be a negative thing in my life, I always thought that they deserved more than what humans give to them. Depleting their food source and taking over their land, making them skinny and hungry and unable to live without eating our pets. So I helped start The Coyote Crew. Of course, I have never particularly liked coyotes- my next door neighbor had his cat, Jazz, killed by one, and my dad had to clean up the cat’s dead body in their front lawn. Nobody liked that experience in the slightest, obviously. Jazz was an awesome cat, and we all miss him, but he is only gone because the coytes didn’t have any other options or land to hunt on. And what I hope to do is to make sure that coyotes don’t have a chance to eat the pets, and that humans don’t have intentions to hurt coyotes.
Hi I’m Ava. I have always been scared of coyotes coming into my neighborhood. Some of my firsthand experience includes having coyotes visit my neighborhood, and even being only feet away from one as a small child. Ever since I was a little kid I cared for animals and their rights. One of the main topics I wanted Coyote Crew to cover was that while we should take action to get coyotes out of our neighborhoods, we should not harm the coyotes in the process. Another point is that not only should we strive for our neighborhoods to be free of coyotes but to learn and educate others on why coyotes come to neighborhoods in the first place. Most times when there is a conflict between the two, it is misunderstood on what is really happening on either side. Hopefully in my future I will continue on this journey of learning and educating about animals as it is a topic that cannot be explained in simple words.
The Coyote Crew as a whole has always been about peace between animals and humans. Our goal is to keep coyotes peacefully and safely out of your neighborhood. That however, is only one of our motives for doing this project. Our second one is that we are Girl Scouts with the determination to achieve our Silver Award. If you are unaware of what that is, it is a project most Girl Scouts go through; the qualifications for it require 50 hours of work towards the project, it has to contribute to the community, and you have to work with the community itself. So far we have completed 50+ hours of work and presented to five classes about our project. We have also hung up posters and even started a website.
Now doing this during a literal Pandemic has been no easy feat. Whether it was the fear of contracting the virus itself or the struggle of actually getting the project planned and finished, there were complications. We would say that about 95% of the project was online or digital. We haven’t met up for any of this project.
It sounds crazy to say, but all of our meetings were either on Zoom or facetime. The Pandemic added extra stress about our working with the community, because we haven’t been able to really work with the community as of late. Luckily, we had an opportunity to present to a few classes and interview community members with experience over Zoom. And to make our project sustainable, we thought the internet is one of the few things that will stay for…well a long time to say the least. What better way to do so than to make a website?
Check out our website and email us from there if you are interested in protecting yourself and your pets, and email us with any coyote related questions! Our website explains simply how to keep your boundaries with coyotes and how to keep yourself and your pets safe. There is also a link to a podcast we spoke in (coming soon), an interview with a cat fosterer who has a lot of experience on coyotes, and pages where you can email us and have your own experience with coyotes put up, including an encounters page, a Q&A, and “a design your own flier” (to put up in your neighborhood warning about coyotes.) We hope you use the information in the website and put it to good use, as well as interacting with it. We don’t have many supporters now, but we do hope to in the future!
Thank you so much for reading our article, it means the world to us! We are so grateful to have been invited to post on this site. We never thought we would get as far as to be sought out to speak about something we care about so much, and we appreciate every ounce of support!
–The Coyote Crew
Growing up, were you a member of any youth groups? How many homes did you live in and how many schools did you attend? And remember, the best way to combat gaslighting is to speak your truth…
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My favorite blogs are written by honest individuals who broaden how I look at life. In photos as well as words, blogger Katrina of katrinature shares her experiences of travel, nature, and wildlife. Have you ever heard of a quokka?…
It is well-known that animals can bring people happiness. Whether this is being greeted by your pet when you come home, an exciting day trip to the zoo, relaxing in a cat cafe or even participating in goat yoga! For me, I’m happiest when I encounter animals in the wild. The thrill of spotting a hornbill flying overhead, searching for sleeping koalas in gum trees or swimming with whale sharks: this is what motivates me to travel! So imagine my excitement when my travels led me to meet the happiest animal in the world…the quokka!
Katrina’s travel buddy, Rachel, enjoys a selfie with a quokka.
Quokkas have often been referred to as the happiest animals on earth because they literally look like they are smiling. They are also very inquisitive so getting close to these happy little creatures is easy if you know where to go. Quokkas can be found in scattered populations along the very south corner of Western Australia and on several of the islands. By far the most popular place to see them is Rottnest Island, off the coast of Perth.
A quokka’s smile is infectious.
Rottnest Island was named by Dutch explorers, meaning “rat’s nest” since they believed the quokkas were some sort of giant rat. They are in fact marsupials, which means if you visit you may be lucky like I was and see a mother with a joey! They are also far cuter than rats.
Quokkas look happy all over.
I 100% recommend visiting Rottnest Island if you are in WA. Ferries run daily from Fremantle and it is well worth your money as these cute, smiley marsupials are hopping around all over the island. You literally can’t miss them!
DO NOT feed them as despite being friendly they have been known to bite, and they also prefer foraging for berries and grazing anyway.
DO take a selfie!
What’s the happiest anyone or anything you know?
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For this Toastmasters speech, I needed to inspire my audience.
The face of innocence.
Do you feel like me? My To Do list is going full tilt every minute, every hour, every day, every week. At the end of the day, I often regret that I didn’t get more done.
That’s why everyone must add one more thing to their To Do list. It will help you with the rest of your list. I learned it from a puppy — a terrier-labrador mix — who’s shaped like a football.
Every night, after dinner, I put my dogs out to do their business.
Last summer, however, no matter how many times I entreated Ms. Puppy to come back in, she wouldn’t. She was too busy chasing rats!
Our little back yard features fruit trees, thanks to my husband’s vow that we should be able to eat whatever we grow. The fig has been especially generous. Despite dogs knocking it down multiple times when it was new, every year it is abundant.
This year it put out much fruit, yet we ate nothing. Rats ate everything!
Ms. Puppy delighted in chasing them up the tree so that she could stand on her hind legs and bark at them. Surely those rats mocked her from the branches, their smiles full of figs.
Nonetheless, Ms. Puppy was having fun — and so were the rats!
I was having no fun. Rats were demolishing my fruit, Ms. Puppy was refusing to come indoors and cease her barking.
The way her eyes and the corners of her mouth tilted up showed that she was clearly having a blast. She was laughing at me, at the rats, at the sheer joy of playing.
She would barrel toward me, all 70 pounds of her. Last second, she would swerve. I would veer. I wanted to tear my hair out. We needed to go to bed, and the neighbors needed quiet.
Then I realized the problem. Her entire short To Do list, unlike my mile-long one, features only one entry: HAVE FUN.
I tried to make my proposition look fun. We chased each other, dodging back and forth, both of us laughing! The more nights we enjoyed ourselves, the evenings she came into the house cooperatively.
Lesson learned: When I have fun, the process, my interactions, and the outcome go better. The more I dread doing something, the more I must figure out where the fun lies. That way, if things don’t go as planned, at least I enjoyed myself. More often than not, if I have fun, things will turn out better than I expected.
Happiness Between Tails by da-AL 