On a cool late March morning in Rock Creek Park, I tramp along a slope thick with oak leaf litter, following khaki-clad Ken Ferebee over spring beauty wildflowers and through bud-swollen spicebush branches. The park preserves 1,755 acres, mostly in Northwest Washington, D.C.; as its natural resources management specialist, Ferebee keeps an eye on plants, the growing deer herd that damages them, box turtles, and other creatures. He's been on the job here since 1991, but just last year a new animal crossed his radar—one that intrigues not only him and me, but the entire D.C. metropolitan area. The coyote's come to town.

In fact, if you want to anthropomorphize the coyote, you might call it an over-achiever. "The successful colonization by the coyote of most of North America…over the past 100 years is unparalleled by any other species of terrestrial mammal in recent history," writes Canadian Wildlife Service biologist Gerry Parker in his book Eastern Coyote: The Story of Its Success. Two ingredients made the coyote's spread eastward a success over the last century: The hacking down of eastern woodlands left more open areas and forest edge for coyote habitat, and the virtual annihilation of gray wolves (Canis lupus) in the East and Northeast and red wolves (Canis rufus) in the Southeast eliminated two of the coyote's most formidable competitors.
[The Wash Post currently has an article on coyotes in the city, but a commenter pointed to this much more informative, though older, one.]