A Coyote Trapping in the Ditch
After finding his poultry decimated, a local farmer clears a coyote den and prepares to show his catch at the town cinema.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
When Edmund Anderson found one of his choice turkey hens and several chickens dead this week, he decided to make an investigation. His son Arthur and Purdy Grewell followed coyote tracks to a den near the Consumers Ditch company canal. They dug out the den and captured seven coyote puppies. Arthur has been feeding them, and Mr. Anderson plans to have them on exhibition at the picture show at Liberty Hall this Saturday night.
“When all hands had dug out the den, they found seven little coyote puppies which Arthur took home.”
This vignette of agricultural life in White Bluffs captures the constant friction between early twentieth-century homesteaders and local wildlife. It serves as a stark reminder of the rural reality that existed before the land was radically altered by federal dam projects.
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