Monday, March 06, 2006

Urban Coyotes

I know y'all are perfectly capable of reading boingboing.net for yourselves, but I still feel the compulsion to link to stuff like this that I find personally appealing.

That's what the internets are for, right?

Anyway, apparently Coyotes are colonizing the urban centers of American cities. Canis latrans being a personal favorite critter of mine, I find this neat in its own right. It highlights a larger issue though.

Namely the nature, scope, and limitations of Power. Power is something a lot of us talk about a lot, but that we never define very well (aren't most things we talk about a lot?). Lets call Power the thing that creates commodities and cubicles. The thing that defends both property and propriety. The thing that cuts down trees and names streets and housing developments after them. The thing that certainly never imagined 68 pound coyote-wolf hybrids roaming said housing developments after hours.

So what does this mean? Is the triumph of the scavenger an illustration of the limits of power and order to regulate and constrain the teeming universe? That the clever and the quick can outwit and tactically outflank the monolithic phalanx of control? Or does it demonstrate that the only way to survive regimentation is through seeming inoffensiveness, and shall we predict that if Coyote-kind should commit any serious offense against the public order, they will be dealt with effectively and brutally?

And if the offense against the public order is eating a four year old, what does that say about our romantic notions of the chaotic and the wild? Hobbes anyone?

Damned if I know anything these days.

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