I take walks in Graceland cemetery once a week or so, a habit I've kept up for the last couple of years. It's a peaceful spot in the midst of a noisy city: funereal, of course, but also full of natural beauty. There are the usual big old trees and cultivated beds, but one corner of the cemetery is also devoted to native prairie restoration, where you can wander through waist-high grasses and find small grave markers dotting the paths.
When I began walking in Graceland, more than one person told me to keep an eye out for the coyotes. I wasn't aware that the cemetery was a coyote haven, and at first I thought it must just be a rumor, because I'd been going for months and hadn't seen any. But then the dam broke: I spotted my first one after four months of weekly constitutionals, and now hardly a visit goes by that I don't see at least one coyote. Sometimes they trot past in groups as big as four or five. I keep well away from them, and they from me, but they're gorgeous to look at, and if I didn't absolutely know better (don't pet wild animals, kids) I'd very much want to snuggle one.
Coyote tracks in the snow at Graceland. (Lynn Wells)
Stanley Gehrt, head of Chicago’s Urban Coyote Research Project, estimates that there are as many as 4,000 coyotes in Cook County. City life is good to coyotes: animals in urban areas have better access to food in the form of garbage, scraps, and small animals (including housepets - keep your feline murdermachines inside, please). And once they’ve figured out how not to get run over by cars, the general lack of predators grants urban coyotes a longer average lifespan than their rural cousins.
To keep out of the way of humans, urban coyotes trend a little more nocturnal, making it easy to go long stretches even in the close confines of a city environment without seeing one. If you do happen to meet a coyote, all the best practices of wild animal interactions apply: leave it alone, don’t feed it, and leash your pets. Attacks on humans are extremely rare, and in fact Chicago protects its urban coyotes as beneficial predators that keep rat and Canada goose populations controlled.
Coyote on top of a Graceland mausoleum. (Megan Wells)
In the early days of the pandemic, with public parks closed, Graceland was one of the few remaining green spaces available in Chicago. As more people visited, I saw the coyotes less and less often. My last few walks had been coyote-free affairs, and I was beginning to wonder whether the city had decided to clear them out, when I finally spotted one last week - jogging between the headstones near the lake, unbothered as ever. I guess they were just avoiding the crowds. And who among us can’t relate to that?