Coyotes hold a peculiar interest as both an enduring symbol of the wild and a powerful predator we are always anxious to avoid. This book examines the spread of coyotes across the country over the past century, and the storm of concern and controversy that has followed. Individual chapters cover the surprisingly complex question of how to identify a coyote, the real and imagined dangers they pose, their personality and lifestyle, and nondeadly ways of discouraging them.

Carol Cartaino, a native of New Jersey and graduate of Rutgers University (major in English and minor in biology), has had a lifetime interest in animals, the outdoors, and the natural world. She has spent many happy hours hiking, camping, fishing, river rafting, kayaking, and engaging in outdoor photography and nature study.

For the past 40 years, Carol has been a professional book editor and writer's collaborator, working on almost every subject imaginable within nonfiction, with a strong emphasis on how-to, self-help, and reference. She has helped authors from Jack Samson of Field & Stream to scuba divers to underwater photographers, from the editor of Arizona Highways to plastic surgeons, travel writers to experts on moonshine, produce complete and satisfying books. In her ten years as an editor in the Trade Division of Prentice-Hall, Inc., books on nature and gardening were among her specialties. In the ten years that followed as the editor-in-chief of Writer's Digest Books, she worked with a great variety of authors, again with a focus on how-to and reference. In her 20 years of freelance editing and collaboration since, she has been a book doctor for literary agents, publishers, book producers, and individual authors of many kinds, including environmentalists and veterinarians.

Carol presently lives with her son and many pets on a 66-acre farm in Southern Ohio, on which she can continue her nature study and listen to the coyote songs.