Six coyote pups and their parents, denning in an overgrown Southeast Portland backyard, offer a first look at The Oregonian/OregonLive’s upcoming project on coyotes in Portland and across Oregon.
The canid family of eight lives on private property in the Hazelwood neighborhood, where The Oregonian/OregonLive installed three trail cameras May 6. The cameras have captured the dad bringing home dinner, pups wrestling and exploring, and a patient mother regularly being tormented by her six offspring. The yard has become a hidden playground: a large lawn, blackberry bushes, thick cover and an alarming number of rabbits.
The woman, who lives there with her husband, has lived on the property off and on since the 1950s. Her parents owned it before her and once kept cattle, chickens and a large garden there. Now, she shares it with two Chihuahua mixes named Becky and Drama, four cats — and, for the moment, a family of eight coyotes.
The backyard is a small example of a larger story that unfolded across Portland: coyotes are living closer to us than many people realize. They watch from the edges, slip through yards and parks, and raise pups behind fences and blackberry thickets — adapting to the rhythms of the city while remaining mostly out of sight.
The larger project will explore how coyotes became Portland’s “ghost dogs,” what they eat, misconceptions, their unique family structure, why more than a century of killing them has failed to stop them, what the real risks are for people and pets and what more than 20,000 Portland-area sightings reveal about where and when coyotes are reported across the metro area.
