He came to Linda in 1990, after a farmer who was mowing hay had unknowingly gone over his family's den, killing his mother and siblings. The farmer gave him to a neighbor's child, who kept him in a bed liner in the garage.

When he was about two months old, the child's mother decided she wanted to get rid of him and called to have him picked up while her son was in school. He arrived at Linda's house in a crate. When she opened it, he ran out and jumped onto her lap, licking and kissing her. This coyote pup had obviously been imprinted.

Noticing that his eyes were gray, Linda took him to see Dr. Ingram, then to eye specialist Dr. Sigler. He was diagnosed as having nutritional cataracts, the result of being raised on cows' milk instead of Espilac. Nothing could be done for this condition, so he would spend the rest of his life with limited vision.

Linda named him Don Coyote, after the book Don Coyote: Good Times and Bad by Dayton O Hyde. Don has spent all his life at Southwest Wildlife-most of it with Ashley, who was named by the fire fighters who saved her from the Cowboy Wildfire in 1994, where she sustained permanent lung damage. They have been constant companions and faithful mates for 10 years.

During his lifetime, he has become a celebrity of sorts. He was filmed howling at sunset on Pinnacle Peak, and the footage was used in the opening for the Channel 10 news for several years. He was also in the National Geographic Special, The Sonoran Desert: a Violent Eden, and has had a few small parts in other scientific films.

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