Coyote Plush Toys and Gifts

Find Coyote stuffed animals, facts and information in the Forest at Animals N More.

The plush coyotes shown above include a Wild Republic Coyote Cuddlekins. It is very soft and just the right size for cuddling. They also have Hug'ems Coyote that is smaller. Also shown is the Howling Coyote from Douglas. And also the Adventure Planet Coyote. The Coyote Hand Puppet at left is from Wildlife Artists. Check our sponsor's Gift Shop to see if there are any Coyote plush toys lurking there.

The Coyote, Prairie Wolf or Brush Wolf, (Canis latrans) meaning barking dog, sings the evening song of the American West. After sundown, it leaves its lair and finds a nearby knoll. Here it sits down, alone or in company, to give voice to its serenade. One lone animal will sound like a whole pack as it runs through its entire repertoire of cries: from short yaps, barks, and whines, to a prolonged lamenting howl that carries for a remarkable distance on the still night air. This evening performance is a regular ritual with the coyote.

The coyote is widely hunted, not because of its singing but because many sheepherders consider it a wholesale destroyer of their stock. But wildlife experts have shown that the coyote kills only a fraction of the number of domestic animals it is thought to. It does more good as a destroyer of rodents than harm as a killer of livestock. Sheep, after all, need grass, and rodents consume it; the coyote, which can travel at a speed of 45 miles an hour, is the only mammal fast enough to catch a jack rabbit, and the slower rodents easily fall prey to it.

Aside from rabbits and rodents, the coyote devours birds, reptiles, carrion, and insects. It stores food like other dogs. The coyote even goes fishing! Another surprising thing about its diet - it will feed on fruit and vegetables.

With a companion - the animal often hunts in pairs - the coyote may attack deer and elk and bring them down; but sometimes luck and quarry's shark hoofs and antlers bring defeat and death to the coyote. And it must look out for its big cousin, the wolf. The wolf is fond of the coyote - but only as food.

Coyotes never harm people. In the United States National Parks these animals are often quite tame, and willo take food from your hand.

Like the wolves, coyotes usually mate for life - but should misfortune overtake one, the other will usually mate again. Breeding time is in February, as a rule, but earlier in the warm regions.

Shortly before the day comes for the female to have her pups - about two months after mating - she selects a den for the nursery with the aid of her mate. It may be in a cave, a natural shelter among the rocks, a hollow tree or a burrow dug in the ground. The nursery is quite bare, without any leaves or grass for a bed. If the pair make a burrow, they usually dig branching tunnels that may extend 25 or 30 feet underground to the chamber, and dig a ventilator through the roof. The two coyotes now take up residence inside the chamber.

A few days before the family arrives, the male coyote must leave the den and find himself a home close by. His mate stays behind and bears her litter, six babies as a rule but sometimes as many as nineteen.

While the babies are small the mother has no time to get about. The male is responsible for keeping his family supplied with food. He does not enter the den, but brings his daily offering of rabbits, rats, and mice and lays them at the entrance. Sometimes he disgorges partly digested food, and sometimes the mother does so as the infants are weaned and prepared for the hearty meals of meat they will consume later on. As the pups grow older, it takes all the time of both parents to keep them in food.

When six weeks old, the pups begin to romp and play outside but are not ready to join the chase until two months old. At about this time the father is permitted free use of the den and with the mother begins the serious duty of teaching the pups to hunt. The parents take their young on longer and longer trips away from the nursery and show them tried and true coyote ways of capturing their own mice, gophers, ground squirrels and other prey.

By the fall of the year, the young coyotes are ready to leave the comfort of their parents' home to seek their own fortune in distant lands. Sometimes they must travel a hundred miles or more to find an untenanted range of their own. Inexperienced as they are, the adolescent pups fall an easy prey to their enemies. Many die of hunger and exhaustion before they can get located in new territory. Thirteen years is a long life for a coyote.

Coyotes sometimes mate with domestic dogs. The hybrid offspring of such a match lack the even disposition of the domestic dog and are not so easy to train.

Normally a creature of the open plains, prairies,and desert regions, the coyote has occasionally entered the forests. It can be found in western and central North America, from Costa Rica north to Alaska and from the Pacific coast east to Ohio and Michigan.

Scarcely half the size of the gray wolf, this wild dog is an attractive slender animal, with thick, long fur, erect ears, and a lengthy, bushy tail tipped with black. Its coat is grayish or tawny in color, nearly white on the under parts. A full-grown coyote stands 21 inches at the shoulders and weighs between 20 and 30 pounds (not so much, compared to the male wolf's 60 to 100 pounds). It is about 4 feet long; one-third of this is tail.