The Secret Identity of a Coyote-Like Creature
A photographer began shooting unusual-looking coyotes on Galveston Island. They turned out to be descended from a very rare wolf species.
It started in 2008, when a pack of strange-looking coyotes—or were they coyotes?—ran off with one of Ron Wooten’s dogs. “It wasn’t pleasant,” he says. The dog did not survive.
But Wooten, who by day works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is the kind of guy who keeps a dead rattlesnake and deer hide in his freezer, so instead of getting angry with the wild animals, he decided to investigate them on his own time. To him, the animals in this unusual pack” hybrids. He began tracking them around Galveston, Texas, and sending photographs off to experts. “The first year was pretty frustrating,” he says. “Nobody was really interested in taking a look at them.”
