Portland’s Evergreen Cemetery has long been a popular place for Forest City residents to walk their dogs. Its bosky lanes and surrounding fences give the canines a chance to run free with little danger of encountering speeding vehicles or disapproving dogcatchers, although grieving relatives occasionally express their displeasure at the dogs doing what comes naturally on graves and headstones. So perhaps there’s a certain justice at the news that the coyotes who also frequent the cemetery in Maine’s largest city have taken to eyeing their domestic counterparts as dinner rather than kissing cousins.

Folks who live near the Stevens Avenue burial ground have seen coyotes trotting among the gravestones for years. But in the last year or so, according to cemetery officials, pet owners have reported several less-than-friendly encounters between the coyotes and dogs, and no one is under any illusion that Fido would fare well in a coyote free-for-all.

Evergreen is Maine’s largest cemetery, with 239 acres and four small ponds, and it provides the final resting place for such notables as James Phinney Baxter, former mayor of Portland. But both its size and its solitude also attract a wide variety of wildlife of both the predator and prey persuasion.

“There’s about a hundred acres of undeveloped woods out there,” notes Phil Labbe, the city’s director of parks and recreation, “so there’s plenty of cover for coyotes, deer, all sorts of animals.” Labbe says complaints have been sporadic, and the incidents seem to occur most frequently around dusk or early morning.

The parks director doesn’t know of any plans to try to hunt or capture the coyotes, although the city’s animal control officer will respond to specific complaints. “The coyotes have been there for some time now,” he says. “They’ll probably be there for a good while longer.” Given that reality, dog owners might want to keep their pets on a short leash in the future.

(Published July 2003)