'The Daily Coyote' By Shreve Stockton

'The Daily Coyote' By Shreve Stockton

Reviewed By Susan Salter Reynolds
Miami Herald

A few years ago Shreve Stockton drove across the country on her Vespa to start a new life in New York after two years in San Francisco (oh, to be young and footloose!). On the way, she passed through Wyoming and fell in love with the landscape, especially the Bighorn Mountains. When New York City didn't click, Shreve lit out for the territory, landing in the tiny Wyoming town of Ten Sleep.

Soon, she met a rancher who offered her a rustic cabin on his property, Shreve's dream cabin (also Shreve's dream rancher -- oh, to be young and footloose!). One day the rancher, who also worked as a trapper for the U.S. Department of Agriculture killing coyotes, brought home a coyote cub. Reluctantly, Shreve took in the cub, fed him from a bottle, let him sleep in her bed, named him Charlie and gave him the run of the cabin and her life.

Shreve started a blog, ''The Daily Coyote,'' which became an overnight sensation in the nature-starved Web world. In its prime, the site received more than a million hits a month, some of it judgmental. In the 18 years he'd had his job trapping and killing coyotes, Mike the rancher told Shreve, nothing like the impulse to save this cub had ever come over him. The Daily Coyote is an insight into the boundaries between wild animals and humans.

''I had made it a point not to own him,'' Shreve wrote after Charlie inexplicably bit her one day, ``and to coexist without ever being the boss of him.''

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