400,000 coyotes are killed per year in the US. 80,000 by Wildlife Services, the other 320,000 in killing contests. The state control costs taxpayers $20m a year. This has not decreased coyote numbers,. Coyotes are not arch predators who pose a significant threat to game and farmed animals - and even if they were, could these deaths ever be justified?
Thallium sulfate leaves them blind, bald and padless.
With Compound 1080, they sprint desperately to death.
The agony of arsenic, strychnine and cyanide.
Then there's gassing, snaring and clubbing.
Drawing pups from the den with fishhook wire,
to strangle by hand or smash skulls with a rod.
Limbs lost in a leg trap, bitten off, perhaps,
they flee three-legged -
until taken by airbourne shooters
or tracked by contestants in a dystopian drama
with all-too-real results.
The corpse count, the carcass mountain,
celebrated and rewarded.
Those unslaughtered leave the militarised zone
of America's green and unpleasant farmland
to colonise the polis.
The Russian roulette of the roads
presents a fate more favourable to Old Man Coyote.
Prairie wolf turned city slicker.
The sketch on the cover page is great! You've caught a pose and an attitude. Maybe they are siblings. The rest of the post (the poem) tells a horrendous story. I hadn't heard of Compound 1080 before. But I found out that it's still registered to use in Alberta. Gruesome. Dangerous product. Your angry poem doesn't spare us the details. The last 6 lines spell out the irony.