ONE TOUGH COYOTE
Meet the wiliest of all coyotes: Hit by a
car at 75mph, embedded in the fender for 600 miles - but Tricky SURVIVED.
When a brother and
sister struck a coyote at 75mph they assumed they had
killed the animal and drove on.
They didn't
realize this was the toughest creature ever to survive a hit-and-run.
Daniel and Tevyn East were
driving at night along Interstate 80 near the Nevada-Utah border when they
noticed a pack of coyotes near the roadside on October 12/2009.
When one of the animals ran in front of the
car, the impact sounded fatal so the siblings thought there no point in
stopping.
'Right off the bat, we knew it was bad,'
Daniel explained. 'We thought the story was over.'
After the incident around 1am, they
continued their 600 mile drive to North San Juan - even stopping for fuel twice.
But it was only when they
finally reached their destination at 9am did they take time to examine what
damage they may have sustained to the front of their car.
What Mr East
spotted as he bent down to inspect the damage to his car - the body of the
coyote poking out through the radiator
At first
it looked as though it was going to be quite gruesome.
'[Daniel] saw fur and the
body inside the grill,' Tevyn East said. 'I was trying to keep some distance.
Our assumption was it was part of the coyote - it didn't register it was the
whole animal.'
Daniel
East got a broom to try and pry the remains out of the
bumper and got the shock of his life.
'It flinched,' Tevyn East
said. 'It was a huge surprise - he got a little freaked out.'
The pair immediately phone
Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release.
'We could see a little bit of blood, not a
lot, and we couldn't see any wounds,' Tevyn East said. 'We didn't know if it was
suffering and we should put it out of its misery, or if we could rescue it. But
we realized we were going to have to take the front end of the car off to get to
it.'
The coyote had been thoroughly embedded
between the front fender and radiator of their Honda Fit car - and had amazingly
survived the journey without any broken bones or internal injuries.
Wily coyote: The
animal's head can be seen as rescuers took apart the front fender to try and
save it.
The front of the
car is completely taken apart as the coyote begins to wriggle free
And voila! Tricky
the toughest coyote ever rests in a cage after its ordeal - which it survived
with just some scrapes to its paw.
The
coyote - which was nicknamed Tricky - became active while
trying to escape the car space so, fearing severe internal
injuries, wildlife rescue worker Jan Crowell managed to
snare a loop around its neck.
Jan took the coyote to a
kennel in her yard while figuring out where to release it.
But three
days later the coyote saw its chance - and escaped by
wriggling beneath the bottom bar of the cage.
'Now it's a local coyote,'
Tevyn East said.
'This coyote is amazing. If you look at the front of our car, the grill broke
and acted like a net to soften the impact. It's pretty insane ... somehow the
conditions were just right for it to survive the trip.
'We named it
"Tricky"
for a reason,' Daniel East said.
