The Predator/Prey Cycle Next Door

I’m a member of Next Door, a web site that has somehow taken over neighborhood mailing lists. The only Next Door posts I ever look at are the ones about animals: lost cat, found cat, what is this animal (it’s usually a grey fox), and so forth.

This casual reading has led me these purely anecdotal observations:

• During the pandemic, coyotes moved into town. There were a lot of posts about “just saw a coyote,” “coyote walking down the street,” “coyote tipped over my garbage can.”
• Soon after, cats started to disappear. Lost of “lost cat” postings. In real life every street corner around our house—no exaggeration, literally every street corner—had one or more “lost cat” posters. I personally saw a coyote running up the street carrying half a dead cat body.
• After a while, there were no more “lost cat” postings. Presumably the cats were wised up or gone or kept indoors.
• Several months later, I started to see “mangy coyote” and “sick coyote” postings, and even “dead coyote in my yard.” This is the point in the predator/prey cycle when the prey are gone and the predators starve.
• Now the gophers have moved in. “What do I do about gophers in my garden?” The local park has easily 20 gopher mounds. I’m guessing that both cats and coyotes keep gopher numbers down, but there aren’t many cats or coyotes around just now. And not enough grey foxes.

Looking forward to the next step in this cycle.