“Quit lying and shut up!” the DNR explained.

In two posts now, I have discussed the growing problem of coyote-wolf hybrids. Unlike coyotes, and unlike wolves, these animals are unafraid of man. And they are capable of doing serious damage.

Quite recently, they have attacked two horses, one of which was a police horse, the other of which had to be put down.

In response, Michigan’s animal bureaucrats are insisting that the attacks could not have been committed by coyotes, and in today’s Detroit Free Press, basically called one horse owner (a very credible witness, btw) a liar):

OXFORD TOWNSHIP – The coyote came out of the woods, walked right up to her back patio and stared at the house.

Kallie Meyers was inside, and she was so spooked she took a photo in case nobody believed her. It didn’t look like any coyote she’d ever seen. Bigger than normal.

She wanted proof because she’d been told that coyotes don’t come around houses, especially one where five dogs like hers have the run of the property. And that coyotes don’t get that big.

Her neighbors didn’t need proof that they’re out there, though.

“I saw two really healthy coyotes going right through my backyard,” said Sally Stevenson, 68, who lives 2 miles over in Metamora. “My German shepherd is 70 pounds and they were at least that size or bigger. Usually you hear them if they’re packed up and they get an animal — they all go crazy and start yipping. It’s very noisy.”

Jake Losin was in the yard at his sister’s house across the street from Meyers a couple weeks ago when he saw a pack of about eight coyotes. “The very first one I saw I thought it was a deer,” the 22-year-old said. “I looked at it and it was huge.” He stayed outside and watched several other packs move through.

Over the past few years, Meyers said, all her ducks and geese have been killed. The foxes, opossums, raccoons and rabbits in the woods around her have all disappeared too.

Then last Saturday, in mid-afternoon’s broad daylight, one of her horses was attacked and mauled so badly it had to be put down on the spot.

Meyers says those coyotes did it.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources says that’s not true.

They are saying that coyotes don’t attack horses and don’t get that big. But what the DNR really doesn’t want to acknowledge is that these are not coyotes; they are coyote wolf hybrids.

My friend thought to save some flesh and hide from the 100 lb. male that he shot after his dogs were killed, and after I wrote my post and insisted it could not have been a coyote, he sent the sample in for DNA testing. The lab reported back (surprise) that it was a coyote wolf hybrid.

Except our betters at the Department of Natural Resources say that’s not so.

Meyers now wonders if the animals they’re seeing are hybrids between wolves and coyotes, known as a coywolves, which are known to live in northern Michigan. They are known for moving in packs, like the animals she sees poking in and out of the woods, and for being larger than an average coyote but smaller than a wolf. It would explain why the ones she saw were so big. Payne [southeast regional director for the DNR] says it’s not likely, but not impossible.

Sorry to disappoint the eminent Mr. Payne, but these animals are in fact turning up all over the place. National Geographic has discussed them. They are in Wisconsin. The D.C. suburbs. They are common enough in Canada that at least one documentary has been done about them. (Needless to say, “climate change” is being blamed.)

But in semi-arctic Michigan, they are declared nonexistent, and while I’m not sure exactly what is behind this stubborn denial, I suspect that it has something to do with the environmentalists’ crusade to reintroduce wolves in Michigan. If the wolves have been silly enough not to appreciate their own racial purity and to mongrelize themselves into coywolves, that might make the environmentalists look stupid in the public mind. Better to insist that wolves are wolves (and protected!), while coyotes are just coyotes (and unprotected). And since they and only they possess the credentials to declare what animal is what, any evidence of these hybrids has to be dismissed as fantasy.

I don’t think they would admit coywolves exist if they were bitten in the ass by one.