Surviving a baby coyote encounter with jetlagged twin toddlers

It was 4:17 in the morning in suburban California, and I was losing my mind. We had foolishly decided to drag our two-year-old twin girls on a twelve-hour flight from Heathrow to Los Angeles to visit my wife's brother, operating under the deeply flawed assumption that toddlers understand time zones. They don't. Instead, they operate on a biological clock that dictates 4 AM in America is an entirely reasonable time to demand toast and absolute chaos.

I was standing in my brother-in-law's kitchen, wrestling with an espresso machine that looked like it required clearance from NASA to operate, while Twin A and Twin B pressed their sticky, milk-covered faces against the glass patio doors. I live in London. My wildlife exposure consists of aggressively confident pigeons and the occasional urban fox that knocks over our food waste bin while looking distinctly embarrassed. I'm not equipped for the North American food chain.

Suddenly, Twin A pointed a chubby finger at the lawn and screamed, "Puppy!" I squinted through the gloom, fully prepared to go outside and check a collar, perhaps offer it a bowl of water and some leftover ham, because I'm British and we treat all stray animals like mildly inconvenienced commuters. But as my eyes adjusted to the pre-dawn light, I noticed the "puppy" had excessively pointy ears, an unnervingly long snout, and the distinct aura of something that wouldn't appreciate being petted. It was a coyote pup.

The ninety-nine percent rule I learned while having a minor panic attack

My immediate reaction was to grab my phone and frantically search for the American equivalent of the RSPCA, convinced I had stumbled upon an orphaned wild animal that required my immediate, heroic (yet socially distanced) intervention. I ended up calling a local wildlife rescue number I found on some deeply questionable local community forum. The bloke who answered sounded like he had been awake since 1998 and possessed the world-weary tone of a man who spends his life telling tourists not to hug bears.

He explained something that wildlife ecologists apparently call the ninety-nine percent rule, though he just called it common sense. If you see a tiny wild canine wandering around looking slightly confused and unattended, its mother is almost certainly nearby hunting for breakfast. I tried to apply human parenting logic to this, pointing out that leaving your offspring unattended in a suburban garden to go to the shops would absolutely get social services called, but he politely reminded me that nature doesn't care about our weird human moral framework.

Apparently, these mothers are intensely protective and visit the den a few times a day, meaning the absolute worst thing you can do is approach the pup, offer it food, or try to take it inside to warm it up. The wildlife rescue chap told me to lock the doors, keep my own children entirely contained, and just stare at it from behind the safety of double glazing. Feeding them makes them lose their fear of humans, which sounds lovely in a Disney film but in reality usually ends with the animal becoming a nuisance and getting euthanized.

Trying to explain predator drive to a toddler at five in the morning

The real issue was the twins. Twin A was violently rattling the handle of the patio door, absolutely furious that I was denying her the opportunity to cuddle what she firmly believed was a scruffy dog. Trying to explain the concept of apex predators and protective wild mothers to a human who still occasionally eats her own bathwater is an exercise in utter futility.

My brother-in-law stumbled into the kitchen around this time, looked out the window, and casually mentioned that adult coyotes view anything smaller than a medium-sized dog as either a threat or a snack. This comment did absolutely nothing for my blood pressure. If you happen to be outside when you encounter one of these creatures, the general consensus seems to be that you need to scoop up your toddler while simultaneously kicking your pet dog behind you and waving your arms around like a lunatic to make yourself look massive. I’m five foot nine and usually covered in mashed banana, so my ability to look intimidating is severely compromised, but you just have to back away slowly without breaking eye contact.

I was so thankful we were inside, mostly because the girls were wearing their Flutter Sleeve Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuits, which are arguably my favourite things they own. I remember this specifically because Twin B had managed to tip half a cup of water down her front moments before the wildlife encounter, but the organic cotton absorbed it beautifully without turning transparent or getting instantly freezing cold. These bodysuits have 5% elastane in them, which might not sound like much, but when you're trying to physically restrain a shrieking two-year-old who wants to run outside and hug a wild predator, that stretch is a total lifesaver. They hold up to a frankly aggressive amount of washing, which is good because my children treat clothing as napkins, and the flutter sleeves make them look deceptively angelic while they're actively trying to destroy my sanity. We have them in three colours, and I refuse to put the twins in anything else when we travel.

Why my brother in law is an idiot and you can't tame these things

Let me spend a minute complaining about my wife's family, because my brother-in-law genuinely suggested we throw a piece of raw chicken into the garden to "help the little guy out." I had to spend the next twenty minutes aggressively whispering a half-remembered BBC documentary about evolution at him while the twins banged on the glass.

People look at an infant predator and assume they can raise it like a Labrador. They think taming an animal is the same as domesticating one. It's not. Domestication is thousands of years of selective breeding that literally alters the DNA of a species so that they want to sleep on our sofas and bring us tennis balls. Taming is just habituating a wild animal to humans so it tolerates our presence right up until the moment its ancient instincts kick in and it decides to eat your sofa or aggressively defend a sandwich it found in the bin.

You can't fight genetics with good intentions. I barely understand how to discipline my own human toddlers, let alone a creature biologically hardwired to survive in a desert. Plus, from what the tired wildlife man told me, it's massively illegal in almost every jurisdiction to try and keep one, not to mention the fact that they carry diseases like distemper and rabies. As a British person, my understanding of rabies comes entirely from terrible 1980s television warnings, but I remain deeply, pathologically terrified of it.

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How to know if the animal is actually broken

I'm generally of the opinion that nature should be left well alone to do its own brutal, muddy thing. However, I did ask the wildlife bloke if there was ever a time I should actually do something other than panic silently behind a window.

He told me there are a few highly specific scenarios where human intervention is actually necessary, mostly revolving around visible physical trauma. If the pup is visibly bleeding, dragging a broken limb, shivering violently in the cold, or is entirely covered in flies and maggots, then something has gone horribly wrong. Similarly, if it's wandering right up to humans with zero fear while looking crusty and missing patches of hair, it probably has sarcoptic mange, which sounds medieval and is apparently incredibly contagious and fatal without professional medical help.

If you see any of those things, you still don't touch it yourself. You ring a licensed rehabilitator and let people who have had actual tetanus shots deal with it. Don't give it a bowl of water. My instinct is always to offer a beverage to anyone in distress, but apparently a baby animal in shock can easily inhale the liquid into its lungs and basically drown on dry land, which is a horrifying piece of information I could have lived without.

The toys that really survived the trip

By 5:30 AM, the pup had wandered back into the bushes, presumably to find its aggressively protective mother, leaving me to deal with two highly stimulated toddlers in a kitchen that wasn't mine. This is where I've to admit I was entirely saved by the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. Twin B is currently pushing her final molars through, which means she spends roughly forty percent of her waking hours acting like a tiny, angry drunk person. I had packed this silicone panda in my carry-on bag, and it was the only thing that stopped her from chewing on the Airbnb's coffee table when she realised the "puppy" was gone.

It's brilliant because the flat shape means she can really hold it herself without dropping it every four seconds, and it's made of food-grade silicone so I don't have to worry about toxic plastics when she aggressively gnaws on the panda's ears. I honestly just rinsed it under the kitchen tap with some warm water, handed it back to her, and let her go to town on it while I finally figured out how to make a decent cup of tea. If you've a child who's currently producing enough drool to float a small ship, you need this thing in your bag.

I wish I could be as enthusiastic about the Gentle Baby Building Block Set we also brought on the trip. Don't get me wrong, they're perfectly fine blocks. They're soft rubber, they've nice pastel colours, and they don't hurt when Twin A hurls one at my head from across the room. But as a travel toy, they're an absolute nightmare. There are twelve of them, and by day three of our holiday, I was finding them under the sofa, in my shoes, and mysteriously wedged into the cup holders of the rental car. They're great for keeping kids occupied at home on a rainy Tuesday in London, but if you're packing a suitcase, leave the squeaky rubber blocks behind unless you enjoy crawling on foreign floors at 3 AM looking for the one with the strawberry symbol on it.

Accepting our place in the food chain

We spent the rest of the holiday treating the back garden like a high-security prison yard. Every time we went out, I caught myself doing a ridiculous sweeping scan of the bushes, clutching a toddler under each arm, ready to make myself look incredibly large and threatening at a moment's notice. The twins eventually forgot about the wild puppy, replacing their obsession with a loud local bird that kept stealing their rice cakes.

The whole exhausting experience taught me that parenting is mostly just managing constant, low-level anxiety about things entirely outside your control. You can buy the safest car seats, feed them the most organic sweet potato puree, and read all the gentle parenting books in the world, but eventually, you're going to find yourself standing in a kitchen at dawn, staring at a wild predator through a glass door, realising you've absolutely no idea what you're doing.

And honestly, that's fine. As long as you keep your kids inside, ignore your brother-in-law's terrible advice, and let the wildlife handle its own business, you'll probably survive the morning. Just make sure you figure out how the coffee machine works first.

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My messy answers to your wildlife panic questions

What happens if a wild pup seriously approaches my kid?

You absolutely panic internally but stay physically calm, scooping your child up off the ground immediately. Don't run away screaming because that triggers their weird instinct to chase things. Just back away slowly while making a lot of noise and looking as large and terrifying as a tired parent in jogging bottoms can possibly look.

Can my toddler catch something if they touch where the animal was?

My brother-in-law's vet seriously told us this when I forced him to call and ask. While the animals carry nasty things like mange and various terrifying worms, your kid isn't going to catch rabies just from touching the grass where the pup was sitting. Just wash their hands thoroughly with hot soapy water and maybe don't let them eat dirt for a few days. Standard toddler hygiene, really.

Should I leave out a bowl of water if it looks thirsty?

Absolutely not. I know every fibre of your being wants to offer hospitality, but giving them water or food just teaches them that human houses are essentially free restaurants. Plus, an animal in medical shock can choke on water. Let the mother deal with its hydration needs.

Will the mother attack me if I'm holding a baby?

Mother wild animals are deeply suspicious of anything that breathes near their young. If you accidentally stumble near their den, they might posture, make terrible noises, or try to aggressively bluff you into leaving. Holding a baby doesn't give you diplomatic immunity in the animal kingdom, so just back away slowly and give them a massive amount of space.

How long do the parents leave their pups alone?

Apparently, they can be gone for hours at a time while they hunt for rodents. The pups usually stay hidden, but sometimes they get bored and wander out to explore, much like a toddler escaping a playpen. Just because you haven't seen the mother all morning doesn't mean she's gone. She is probably just watching you from a bush, judging your parenting skills.