I guess I didn’t explain this well enough in the post below. It got to the point where it was undeniable that Charlie was with me for life. He was emotionally attached to me and Eli and MC and taking him into the wild would be like any of you abandoning an animal that had become family – a form of cruelty.

Separate from that, Charlie had gotten just accostomed enough to the ways of humans to, if he were set out in the wild, be a danger to himself and to others. Separate even from that are statistics. In the past six months, over five hundred coyotes have been killed in my county alone just from the aerial program. That’s not taking into account coyotes that are trapped or shot on foot. Charlie wouldn’t have lasted a week.

Once it was certain that Charlie was going to stick around and like it, I wondered if neutering him would give him peace of mind. We all know what hormones will do to a brain. I didn’t want Charlie to be trapped in internal conflict between wanting to be “home” and the drive to procreate. I talked with educated folks about this stuff and the facts corroborated my intuition.