It was the summer of 2009 when I pitched the idea of stealing one of the plastic coyotes that dotted the local golf course. The kind of plastic coyote meant to scare off geese, faces frozen in exaggerated grimaces. A symptom of the recession, my art school co-conspirators and I had found ourselves at home without summer jobs. We were bored, restless, and armed with our newfound Art History 101 knowledge. We would “liberate” the plastic coyote and cohabitate with it; a reference to Joseph Beuys 1974 performance “I Like America and America Likes Me” —in which the artist occupied a Manhattan gallery space for three days with a live coyote. For Beuys, this was a heavily symbolic act that recalled shamanism as well as a veneration for nature and Native cultures. Our iteration would be cheekier. There would be no reconciliation with the plastic coyote. Unlike Beuys’ wild companion, a plastic coyote would be symbolic of a capitalist agenda: nature has been appropriated and quite literally de-fanged.

We never did kidnap a plastic coyote that summer, but I find myself returning to the idea of the coyote. A coyote lacks the majesty and cultural cache of its cousin, the wolf. Coyotes creep through our suburban woods and eat our pets. Their vocalizations are often mistaken for partying teenagers. They are considered vermin by farmers and ranchers. The urban Coyote has proliferated and expanded in range in recent years to the degree that we often forget that they lived here first.

The coyote occupies an uncanny space in our modern consciousness between the domestic and the wild. I can’t help but feel a kinship: a native to the suburbs but also a neurodivergent “other.” I stay up too late, I steal my boyfriend’s snacks, my moods are unknowable sometimes even to myself. I can’t help but feel like I am the coyote in the gallery space of my own life. I find myself asking “am I not the coyote?”