Most adults will look back on their
teenage years and recognize that they were challenging times. Puberty, dating,
school pressures, and difficult relationships with parents all come to a head
during that time.
But
it’s not just people who struggle through adolescence. Many animals do, too. And
now is the time when adolescent animals are struggling with many of the same
pressures as human teenagers, a time when they sometimes end up making a mess
of things right in front of us.
Every
fall, as mature animals are preparing to breed again, they realize that they’re
stuck with a bunch of unruly youngsters from their previous litter. Like in
human families, it’s often the males that are the biggest problem. They start
to challenge their parents for dominance, sniff around for their first sexual encounter,
and always behave like they’re angry at the world. Eventually they set off on
their own or are kicked out of their mother’s territory and have to fend for
themselves.
Seldom
is it a smooth transition.
For
coyotes, it usually happens in October when they are eight or nine months old.
They wander into adjacent territories and have run-ins with other coyotes. Or
they end up hugging the edges of mediocre habitat and the zones between
established packs.
“They
aren’t street-wise yet,” explained Numi Mitchell, who has studied the coyotes living on Aquidneck Island for more than a decade. “They may naively sit on
people’s lawns and wander urban areas. They’re out at odd hours and tend to
have encounters with people.”
She
has seen the same thing happen in the autumn with young raccoons and squirrels,
too. Even horses and cattle. “That’s when they all start to have their own
opinions,” she said.
Mitchell
said the wandering of adolescent animals is the reason for the increase in
roadkill every fall. The animals don’t know where they’re going or what they’re
doing, and they aren’t smart enough yet to run from oncoming headlights.
University of Rhode Island Professor Tom Husband has made similar observations about
bears, bobcats, beavers, fishers and other mammals. And he said that part of
the challenge is that the landscape has become more and more urbanized, which
makes it increasingly difficult for these unsophisticated animals to find
suitable habitat that isn’t already occupied. It causes them to explore areas where
an adult animal might not go.
“I
remember a bear scratching his back on a tree and holding up a bird feeder,
chugging it like a Bud Light,” said Husband. “A mature bear in its own
territory isn’t going to do something like that. They’re just somewhat
desperate and naïve about how to find food and a territory.”
Most
of the bears observed in Rhode Island in recent years are believed to have been
adolescent males evicted from their parents’ territories in Connecticut and
Massachusetts and searching for a place to call home. After stumbling around on
their own for a few weeks or months and showing up on the television news, most
of them head back where they came from.
So
if you spot an animal this month that looks lost and hungry and a little beaten
up, give it a break. Don’t feed it, because that will cause all sorts of other
problems. But treat it like you would your own teenage runaway – with a dose of
kindness and understanding and just a little bit of suspicion about what it’s
gotten itself into.
This article first appeared in the Newport Daily News on Oct. 22, 2016.
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