By Dr. Robert Thorson

Meat-eating wild dogs prowl the peripheries of our lives. Known as coyotes (Canis latrans), these carnivores have gradually been moving eastward during the last century. This is wonderful news to me, even though it may cost my neighbors a few of their cats and my daughter a few of her bunny rabbit sightings.

This week’s column was prompted by a research questionnaire I received last week from a wildlife management project at the University of Connecticut. They wanted to know what I’ve seen, heard and thought about the coyotes in my neighborhood. As usual, I had trouble filling out the form because my thoughts seldom fit into convenient categories. But I had no trouble with the final section reserved for open-ended comments. Basically, I recommend a hands- off, live-and-let-die wildlife management policy for coyotes in “ruburbia,” the blend of rural countryside and suburbia where I live.

I think the coyote is a great compromise between having too much wilderness and having too little. Better a few 30-pound wild dogs in your backyard scaring (but not harming) a few children than a pack of 90-pound wolves. With coyotes, rather than wolves, we can have our wildlife cake and not have them eat us, too. Better that our canine cacophony be the higher-pitched barks and yelps of coyotes than the spine-tingling growls and howls of wolves.

Twenty years ago, the mooing of cows was a common daybreak sound at my house. Several years ago, it was the songbirds that made the most noise. Last year, it was the flock of wild turkeys squabbling. This year, it’s been the family of coyotes yelping and barking from the woods behind my house on land that was a pasture in the 1930s.

The sound sequence from cows to songbirds to turkeys to coyotes manifests what I call the “wilding of ruburbia.” This is a good thing for those of us Homo sapiens who have overdosed on modernism and who choose not to live in the city. As with that morning jolt of caffeine or kiss on the cheek, many of us need a wild daybreak reverie to help get us through the urgency and electronic ennui of everyday life. To my mind, the wilding of ruburbia is spiritual progress.

Coyotes are not native to the northeastern United States. It was their larger cousin, the grey wolf, that lived here; they were better adapted to closed canopy forest and the larger prey species such as deer. During the 18th- and 19th-century settlement of New England, however, wolves were driven away as livestock-stealing vermin. In fact, the dates of their local extinction are celebrated in both folklore and in serious art and literature. For example, Connecticut’s Wolf Den Trail celebrates the shooting of the state’s last “she-wolf” in 1742 by Israel Putnam, who later became a Revolutionary War hero. And, for the intellectually oriented, the 19th-century painter Thomas Cole wanted plows to glisten where wolves once roamed. Cole’s remark symbolizes the first half of the making of America, the transformation of wilderness to civilization. My desire to have coyotes bark where sheep once roamed symbolizes the remaking of modern America after its 20th-century glut of materialism and energy obesity.

Coyotes are wild animals. They evolved naturally from dog ancestors. They take care of themselves, living off a highly variable diet rich in small animal protein. They arrive as uninvited guests. But it remains our choice whether to share the modern ruburban landscape with them or not, for we could trap, poison, sterilize or shoot nearly all of them if we desired.

I’m delighted that the regulatory powers that be have let coyotes be part of our lives. But what I like best about this hands-off policy is that it allows the ecological effects of this top-dog predator to cascade downward through the ecosystem. For the coyote that eats the cat keeps the cat from killing more birds, which keeps the bug population down. Hence, fewer black flies and mosquitoes will suck human blood during barbecue season when backyard chefs are burning anything they can fit on the grill, as if they were still cavemen.

Hooray for the wildness in us all.