Destined to Live - Coyote hit at 75mph

I received this story this morning from a dear friend. I do not know who to credit for it, but I must share it with you.

It will help you realize that nothing in the universes of God can interfere with your agreement to live or die. Think about this while you read this story. I promise you it will blow your mind!

The title is "Will To Live" but a better title is "Destined to Live" We all, as my husband puts it, "have an expiration date.'

Despite anything that we might think the outcome should be, when driving into an animal at seventy-five miles an hour, this coyote's date had not arrived.

On Monday, October 12th, I arrived at my office to find a car with a live coyote stuck in the bumper. I took a few photos on my iPhone, which have now been used nationally and internationally to help tell the story.

Below is the most accurate version of the story.

As told by Jeff Adams, managing partner of Willow Springs:


A full-grown coyote took a wild ride across Nevada and California this week, spending eight hours wedged behind a car bumper before being rescued, relatively unscathed.

"We're still dumbfounded," said Tevyn East, who was a passenger in the car being driven by her brother, Daniel, from Boulder, Colo., to North San Juan.

The saga began at about 1 a.m. Monday on the Utah-Nevada border, East said. The two were driving straight through from Colorado , and East was reading to Daniel to help keep him awake.

"My brother was driving and he saw a few coyotes at first, and he saw this coyote running alongside the road," she said. "It turned and darted in front of the car. We were going over 70 mph."

While East didn't see the accident, she heard it.

"It was a big thud," she said. "We were trying to figure out what we should do, stop and look for it or Daniel assumed we had done some real damage and it was instantly killed."

The two continued on, stopping several times for gas and to watch the sunrise. When they got to the Willow Springs artist collective in North San Juan at about 9 a.m., Daniel East went to check the front of the car for damage.

He saw fur and the body inside the grill," Tevyn East said. "I was trying to keep some distance. Our assumption was it was part of the coyote, "it didn't register it was the whole animal."

Daniel East got a broom to try and pry the remains out of the bumper and got the shock of his life.

"It flinched," Tevyn East said. "It was a huge surprise, he got a little freaked out."

Tevyn and Daniel huddled with Jeffrey Adams, the owner of Willow Springs,who got on the telephone with volunteers from Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release.

"We could see a little bit of blood, not a lot, and we couldn't see any wounds. We didn't know if it was suffering and we should put it out of its misery, or if we could rescue it. But we realized we were going to have to take the front end of the car off to get to it."

Volunteer Jan Crowell arrived with a kennel and equipment to help corral the coyote, including a catch pole with a loop, and the delicate operation to rescue the coyote got under way.

"When we opened the hood to look down, we could see the body but not the head; it was under the engine," Tevyn East said. "I assumed it was going to look bad. I was on edge. But when they started taking the front off, it started squirming around to get away ... We had a sense it had life in it."

Crowell was able to get the catch pole loop around its neck and used that to guide the animal into the dog carrier. She then took the coyote home, where she rehabilitates wild mammals, for observation.

"I was just amazed, Crowell said. "Quite frankly, I figured it would have broken bones."

When the 45-pound canine calmed down, the only injuries it appeared to have sustained were a scratch on one leg and a scrape on the pad of one paw, she said.

As soon as she put it in a 6-foot-by-12-foot chain-link kennel, the coyote began trying to jump the fence, Crowell said.

By Thursday, it apparently figured out its escape route before Crowell could finalize arrangements to have it shipped back to release in the wild in Utah.

The coyote found an area that could be bent back with pressure and managed to bend it about 4 inches, Crowell said. "He slipped through and decided it was time to go," she said. "Now it's a local coyote"

In trying to explain the situation, Tevyn East said, "This coyote is amazing. If you look at the front of our car, the grill broke and acted like a net to soften the impact. It's pretty insane ... somehow the conditions were just right for it to survive the trip. We're trying to tell the story to people, to family and friends back home, but people can't wrap their minds around it."

Pictures are worth a thousand words, in this case maybe a million. To see the original pictures and read more, you can go to the photographer's website, David Lovere