Coyote Sightings and Our Whacked-Out Priorities

Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, says that his neighborhood email list has carried reports of coyote sightings in his Knoxville-area community.

For several years now, my wife has been spotting coyotes from the window of the suburban Cincinnati elementary school library where she works.

And about a week-and-a-half ago, I saw a coyote standing along I-75 in the Sharonville area, one of the most densely-populated and commercially busy sections of metropolitan Cincinnati.

Some will undoubtedly view these sightings as encouraging signs of success in efforts to re-establish a species in places where it had once disappeared. But frankly, I'm an anthropocentric human and I don't like the idea of our cities and suburbs becoming cozy habitats for predators.

It's one of the enduring ironies of this era that we expend all sorts of energy, time, money, and concern on various species of the animal kingdom, but can't shake off our indifference to abortion, euthanasia, systemic poverty, or the AIDs epidemic, all enormous threats to human beings.