Movie Review: 'Coyote vs. Acme'
"_The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry._ "
-Mark Twain, Roughing It
_"Me just a worthless coyote, but me ain't nobody's fool."_
-John R. Erickson, The Coyote Sacred Hymn and National Anthem
The United States of America have been at war with the coyote for about as long as the United States of America has known of the existence of the coyote (latin name _Canis latrans_). During the famous Lewis and Clark expedition, exploring what was then known as part of the Louisiana Purchase, but is now known as Iowa, a "prairie woolf" was encountered by the scientifically minded party. They, as was standard practice for naturalists of the time period, immediately opened fire upon it; it escaped unharmed. So it has more or less gone ever since.
The first bounties placed for the killing of coyotes came around the same time English speakers started calling them "coyotes" (the final "e" is sometimes pronounced, sometimes silent, depending on the speaker; both are considered correct) rather than "prairie wolves". Some states still have these bounties today, despite most studies on the subject finding that livestock predation by coyotes, which the bounties are supposed to prevent, does minimal damage to most rancher's bottom lines, while the coyote bounties do minimal damage to the coyote population. If anything, despite being a target for extermination for over two centuries, coyotes have found America under Americans quite nice, having flourished. Virginians Lewis and Clark had to travel all the way to Iowa to shoot at one. If they lived today, they could take pot shots at them in their own backyards.
One of the most famous fictional coyotes is Wile E. Coyote, created by animator Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese in the 1949 Looney Tunes short "Fast and Furry-ous". He was to star in a movie known as Coyote vs. Acme, to be released in 2023, but it was killed for a tax write-off by the studio after it was completed. However, it's so very hard to kill a coyote.
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