Over the past 100 years, coyotes have, quite literally, been taking over America. They are native to the continent, and for most of their existence these rangy, yellow-eyed canids were largely restricted to the Great Plains and western deserts where they evolved. But after wolves and cougars were exterminated from most of the United States by the 1800s, coyotes took their place. Colonizing some areas at a rate of 720 square miles per year, coyotes now occupy—or "saturate," as one scientist I spoke with described it—nearly the entire continent. (Long Island is a notable exception.) The animals are now the apex predators of the east. And they're proving so resourceful that e