Althouse: At the Coyote Café...

August 20, 2026

At the Coyote Café...

... you can talk your way through lunchtime.

54 comments:

Smilin' Jack said...: Is that a new temporary pier? I remember they had a rickety metal one out there a few years ago that collapsed, and a couple of people nearly drowned.

Looks like the dog on the right is deciding whether it would be easier to make the swim or go around.; 8/20/26, 10:58 AM
Peachy+2 said...: 2 coyotes?; 8/20/26, 11:01 AM
n.n said...: Pierly beloved.; 8/20/26, 11:04 AM
Curious George said...: Looks like the coyotes are tied to anchors.; 8/20/26, 11:25 AM
bagoh20 said...: What are they looking for? Does Acme deliver products in Madison by boat?; 8/20/26, 11:30 AM
Original Mike said...: Please trot over to our neighborhood. The rabbit infestation has become intolerable.; 8/20/26, 11:31 AM
Smilin' Jack said...: I didn’t notice they were coyotes. I never saw any when I lived in Madison. Maybe the place is reverting to nature now.; 8/20/26, 11:35 AM
Original Mike said...: We had coyotes and fox in our near west side neighborhood, and the rabbit population was in check. But it's been awhile since we've seen either, and the rabbit population has exploded.; 8/20/26, 11:38 AM
Peachy+2 said...: wow - are they tethered to those posts?; 8/20/26, 11:43 AM
Original Mike said...: Those are anchors. I bet they're fake coyotes; to keep the ducks and geese off. Our mechanical owl doesn't work at the task, but our fake snake seems to be somewhat effective.; 8/20/26, 11:52 AM
Original Mike said...: The pellet gun, OTOH…
Haven't had to use it in several days.; 8/20/26, 11:53 AM
Peachy+2 said...: Healthy coyote populations here, too.
They have a den nearby and they howl and scream at all hours of the night. I found an intact dead bunny last night. Placed it in a plastic trash bag - a white one. It was getting dark, I didn't feel like dealing with it so I placed the bag away from the house. This morning the whole bag was missing.
WTF? It was a rotting stinky bunny. Not fresh.
I was going to attempt a burial.; 8/20/26, 11:55 AM
Iman said...: Coyote, the Man’s after you.
Coyote, if he catches you you're through
Coyote, they say that life ain’t fair
Coyote, off the cliff and grabbin’ air; 8/20/26, 11:55 AM
Disparity of Cult said...: A distance divides us...

In the movie "Best in Show", the neurotic couple with the Weimaraner had met by noticing each other at Starbucks - two separate Starbucks across the street from each other.; 8/20/26, 12:01 PM
bagoh20 said...: Fake coyotes? Now that makes sense. I need to get one to protect my pond.; 8/20/26, 12:03 PM
Original Mike said...: It's a college campus. Those coyotes have a half-life of two days.; 8/20/26, 12:14 PM
Big Mike said...: Yellow dog Democrats. They’re indigenous to Madison.; 8/20/26, 12:27 PM
Rabel said...: $74.99.; 8/20/26, 12:39 PM
bagoh20 said...: Ordered.; 8/20/26, 12:42 PM
Rabel said...: "Encourage Althouse by doing your Amazon shopping...
... going in through the Althouse Amazon link."; 8/20/26, 12:46 PM
rehajm said...: ...another classic from my pal JC (not that one): Interest Rate Surge?; 8/20/26, 12:51 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I would venture the coyotes are not real. In Wisconsin such a thing would pass as cruel and unusual.; 8/20/26, 12:56 PM
rehajm said...: They use these in Idaho a few places and they fool the geese about as long as they fooled you guys. Supposedly if you also use the coyote juice with them you might see some effectiveness...; 8/20/26, 1:07 PM
Bob Boyd said...: What's up, Dock?; 8/20/26, 1:09 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: ai answers...

Grok: A stuffed coyote (the taxidermied kind you see mounted on a wall in a hunting lodge or Western-themed bar) would probably say something like:“I already crossed the border the hard way and got permanently settled. You humans keep arguing about papers and walls while I’m just hanging here, silent, stuffed, and beyond deportation. Border’s been porous for coyotes longer than any of you have been writing laws about it.”

Google: A stuffed coyote cannot speak, but if imagined as a thoughtful observer, it might point out the difference between human borders and animal survival.... Link to a three prong observation (i rather keep the our comment section thin and agile ;-); 8/20/26, 1:12 PM
Aggie said...: They should make a coyote version that uses an air blower, like those tubelike advertising figures with the flapping arms, only with more muted motion. Maybe it could flap its head up and down, like it's howling, and its tail could whip around...; 8/20/26, 1:13 PM
Peachy+2 said...: Years ago when I lived in an HOA (don't recommend) the hood' had ponds. The ponds would attract all sorts of cool wildlife. But also - Geese. hordes of Canadian geese. Most everyone in the hood' felt the geese were a nuisance. Their poop would make the paths slippery and unsafe - and gross.
Someone decided to get a fake Coyote - like Rabel's link.
A few home owners would take turns moving it around the grassy area around the ponds. It seemed effective.
Until someone complained. They thought fake coyote was cruel.
*slaps forehead* So HOA removed the fake coyote for the one idiot homeowner who complained, *slaps forehead*; 8/20/26, 1:46 PM
Original Mike said...: Yesterday morning one of the immature eagles was out on the pier sitting next to the mechanical owl. They looked like good buddies.; 8/20/26, 1:52 PM
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ said...: US long-term bonds slide as Treasury secretary Bessent’s intervention fails to soothe investors ~ FT

Bessent’s incompetence has actually made things worse because he’s further undermined faith in the dollar as well as US fiscal and monetary policy. If Trump wasn’t comatose and dreaming of Natalie he’d sack him.

I'm all for firing a genius who thinks can sway a $40T market with a $4B purse, what difference would it make? The market is worried about a debtor who clearly can't get his debt even remotely under control. Who's sitting at the printer makes little difference as long as both Congress and President keeps the printer printing .

“We're going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you'll say, 'Please, please, it's too much winning. We can't take it anymore, Mr. President, it's too much.' And I'll say, 'No, it isn't. We have to keep winning. We have to win more”

When it costs you substantially more than Greece to raise money you know you’re winning.; 8/20/26, 3:09 PM
MadTownGuy said...: In 20+ years in Madison we only saw one coyote, at Mineral Point Road and Whitney Way late one night. At first I thought it was a youngish German Shepherd, until I got a good look at the tail. Twice, we saw foxes in the neighborhood west of Gammon Road.; 8/20/26, 4:03 PM
Iman said...: Thoughtful Calunicornian voters should vote every member of the state legislature who voted for the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” out of office.

EVERY CONNIVING, THIEVING CORKSOAKING one of them.; 8/20/26, 4:06 PM
rehajm said...: "The market is worried about a debtor who clearly can't get his debt even remotely under control. Who's sitting at the printer makes little difference as long as both Congress and President keeps the printer printing "

...commenting on your bullshit for the second time in as many days I'm giving you some credit for this one, although your complete confidence in the causation is a tell you're a bot or just playing one in real life. Personally I would not expect global markets to react with high correlation to whatever leftie propaganda is being spread this week but then again I was surprised there wasn't a bigger reaction to the US government's announcement there's over a trillion dollars of fraud built in the US budget every year. What do I know?; 8/20/26, 4:09 PM
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ said...: The Bond Market is probably the best civilizational tool that humans have come up with. Democracy, because in the Bond Market people vote responsibly and with caution, not recklessly and based on “vibes” like they do in political elections. And when the Bond Market decides, there is no escape for demagogues, think Berlusconi in 2011. Now it’s Trump turn.

The US bond market is going to defeat the US coalition in its war in the Middle East. Who would have ever thought that New York was going to defeat Jerusalem? Strange times coming up.; 8/20/26, 4:22 PM
Mason G said...: “Stop Nick Shirley Act” or "More Fraud, Please Act"?

You decide.; 8/20/26, 4:27 PM
Iman said...: @Scott Jennings
Fact check: Under Joe Biden, Americans suffered roughly 21 percent cumulative inflation, including a 40-year-high inflation rate of 9.1 percent. Under Trump, inflation was 2.7 percent last year. It’s 3.4 percent today, largely because of the energy shock from the Iran war, but core inflation is just 2.5 percent. But sure - inflation is up. 🤡; 8/20/26, 4:29 PM
Marcus Bressler said...: IEE reminds me of shit splatter stains in a public toilet. Ewww.; 8/20/26, 4:57 PM
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ said...: The Iran war has made an already difficult situation worse.If the war ends and Hormuz normalizes, much of that pressure could reverse. Energy prices could move back toward pre war levels, year on year energy inflation could turn sharply negative, and part of the rise in real yields and term premium could unwind.

But that would simply reveal the structural fiscal problem that Washington should have been addressing all along. The US needs serious work on entitlements, the tax base, administrative efficiency and the long term cost structure of government. Tariffs, market signaling and Treasury buybacks are not substitutes for fiscal reform.

The deeper issue may now be policy coherence itself. Treasury is trying to contain borrowing costs while other decisions increase inflation, fiscal costs and geopolitical risk. The Iran war is the clearest example. Enormous economic and political resources have been consumed, the return appears deeply negative, yet there is no obvious mechanism for accountability or policy correction.

More broadly, policy increasingly looks reactive and opportunistic rather than coordinated. Priorities shift, new initiatives absorb political attention, and the consequences of earlier decisions are met with another patch instead of a change in strategy. Meanwhile the structural fiscal imbalance remains largely untouched.

That may be the more important message from the bond market. Investors are not simply asking for a larger buyback program. They are asking whether Washington still has the institutional discipline to identify its most important problems, allocate fiscal and political resources rationally, and change course when policies produce poor results.

If confidence in that capacity continues to erode, the premium embedded in long term US yields will no longer reflect only the amount of debt being issued. It will increasingly include a premium on the coherence, credibility and predictability of US policymaking itself.; 8/20/26, 5:22 PM
Vance said...: "REEEE" says IEEE. "We have to get debt under control! But as a Democrat, it's literally murdering babies, grandma, and everyone else if Trump cuts a penny of spending! We must prevent every single cut! I hate the very concept of DOGE! The waste and fraud must flow! Trumps fault for the spending, but we Democrats must sue and sue and riot to prevent any cuts at all!"; 8/20/26, 5:55 PM
Mason G said...: When leftards say ""We have to get debt under control!" what they mean is ""We have to get spending under our control!"; 8/20/26, 6:33 PM
bagoh20 said...: I do some bond investing, but I'm neither responsible nor cautious, so there goes that theory, but more than one person had told me I'm unusual, so maybe.; 8/20/26, 6:35 PM
bagoh20 said...: If I used the Althouse blog portal for my Amazon purchases, it would make the Madison bloggers so wealthy they might stop blogging and travel the world sampling every Starbucks between here and Bangkok. That would force us to subscribe to IEE's newsletter for entertainment. Ain't nobody got time fo dat, so I donated instead. Thanks for all the the hard work all these years, and for getting Mead off the streets. Those shorts strutting around were hot, but also a little disturbing, but; 8/20/26, 6:55 PM
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ said...: bagoh2o, you wrote earlier -- 𝙄 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙮 𝙡𝙤𝙪𝙙 𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙪𝙨, 𝙨𝙤 𝙄 𝙜𝙤𝙩 𝙣𝙤 𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙬.

How do you manage your sleep? Are you able to sleep through the night, or does your tinnitus interfere with your sleep?; 8/20/26, 6:58 PM
Achilles said...: LOL!

The Bond Market is now on Iran's side in the war.

There is no such thing as peak retardation. There is always another taller mountain for these people to climb.; 8/20/26, 7:26 PM
bagoh20 said...: Regarding tinnitus, IEE asked: "How do you manage your sleep? Are you able to sleep through the night, or does your tinnitus interfere with your sleep?"

Tinnitus is weird. Mine is very loud, and I can't remember when it started. I'm so used to it that I don't even notice it unless I think about it, and then it's overwhelming. It's about as loud as you would normally have Wheel of Fortune on TV playing in your living room, and it sounds like cicadas if you've ever heard those. There are YouTube videos that play the sounds. Different people have different frequencies. What is amazing is how loud it is, yet how unnoticeable it is until you think about it. It's not a real sound, but a signal created between your ear and brain. I wonder how such a thing survived the forces of evolution. It's especially UNhelpful in quiet situations like hunting mastodon, as I do on weekends. If you ever attended a Who concert or something similar and heard that ringing all night long afterward. That's what it's like, but 24/7, which sounds terrible, except for how you can ignore it completely until you think about it. I have no problem falling asleep regardless of whether I notice it or not.

Thanks for asking, because it sent me down a rabbit hole where I discovered that it's been reported as far back as ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform clay tablets, around 2000 BCE. It's likely been a thing for most of human history. Maybe other animals experience it too, even if they've never been to a Who concert.; 8/20/26, 7:43 PM
Gospace said...: My across the street neighbor has coyote. We have fox.

Animals that compete for the same food have territories that the other rarely ventures into. I've never seen a coyote in my yard. Wild animals have learned to use paved roads as their territorial boundaries.

And despite ENCON's denial, we do have wolves in the area. They don't much care about coyote or fox territorial boundaries. They're bigger. And fox and coyote are food also...

We don't have many wolves. Sightings are rare. Been a few years since I've personally seen one. Winter sightings are more common.

Feral and barn cats learn how to survive. If you're new to the area and let your domestic cat wander outside- it becomes food. I informed my across the street neighbor of this when she first moved in and asked if I had seen her cat... that she had let outside 2 days earlier.; 8/20/26, 7:51 PM
Peachy+2 said...: I too have horrible tinnitus. the worst.
I aggravated it again today by exposing myself to loud noise.
oh I hate it when I do that. I know better.
Alien dump truck; 8/20/26, 7:52 PM
Josephbleau said...: “ There is no such thing as peak retardation. There is always another taller mountain for these people to climb.”

I theorize that is why polls are wrong. We no longer have a normal distribution of the public. So for polarized politics, the mean may be statistically well behaved under the central limit theorem while being substantively misleading. This distorts the traditionally calculated significance of poll results.; 8/20/26, 8:25 PM
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ said...: @bagoh20 & Peachy +2: Thank you for your responses. Tinnitus is something I deal with as well. For me it's more of a high pitched frequency. I was curious how you managed sleep -- that is an issue for me at times.; 8/20/26, 8:44 PM
Josephbleau said...: We have a soulless borg that issues statements calibrated to twinge clusters of brain cells in the target population. AOC herself says that woke 1 was crazy. What is this shit? Does she apologize for anything? No, she says haha it dosent count now. All the people I fiercely insulted before are actually innocent?

It is obvious that the climate cult algoremann idiots were bsing. If you want to argue I will accommodate.; 8/20/26, 10:11 PM
bagoh20 said...: " I was curious how you managed sleep -- that is an issue for me at times."

I don't know if it really helps, but I go to sleep with the TV on and find that I fall asleep immediately; but with silence, I stay awake longer. I can go for days or even a week without noticing it. I wish there were a cure, but compared to issues that some are saddled with, this is nothing. Otherwise, my health is a pure miracle.; 8/20/26, 11:09 PM
wendybar said...: My sister in law bought those headband headphones to sleep. Now she plays gentle music and it drowns out the tinnitus. You can get them at amazon, and use the Amazon link!!!

https://www.amazon.com/MUSICOZY-Headphones-Bluetooth-Headband-Ultra-Thin; 8/21/26, 2:32 AM
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ said...: 𝙄 𝙬𝙞𝙨𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙖 𝙘𝙪𝙧𝙚, 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙞𝙨𝙨𝙪𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙙𝙙𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝, 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙞𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜.

I agree -- it's more of an annoyance than anything.; 8/21/26, 9:29 AM
Rustygrommet said...: bagoh20 said...
" I was curious how you managed sleep -- that is an issue for me at times."

I don't know if it really helps, but I go to sleep with the TV on and find that I fall asleep immediately; but with silence, I stay awake longer. I can go for days or even a week without noticing it. I wish there were a cure, but compared to issues that some are saddled with, this is nothing. Otherwise, my health is a pure miracle.

I keep a fan on. The steady drone helps. I used to use a CD of thunderstorms that would go for two hours before repeat , but the woman who claims to be my wife "misplaced" it years ago.; 8/21/26, 10:16 AM
Marcus Bressler said...: I can nap during the day with all sorts of background noises. At night, any constant noise keeps me awake. It doesn't help looking at a screen prior to trying to fall asleep. The FWB and I have different sleeping schedules. I sleep say 11-7. She sleeps, say 5 AM to 2 PM. When she watched Vampire Diaries all night, I could sleep through that. When she watched a somewhat-interesting show (MAYBE Grey's Anatomy), I would briefly wake up and wonder what part of the plot was happening. P.S. She's been gone a while now, living with her grandfather, but at the moment is sleeping in POD 3 at the PBCo Jail. Drugs are a terrible thing. Hope this is her bottom.; 8/21/26, 10:47 AM