Foxes

Hardwick agrees. The dean of Dade animal trappers predicts coyotes will arrive in Miami within five or six years, sooner in the event of importation by humans. In many Western cities, including Los Angeles, the coyote has proved itself capable of adapting easily to urban life - and impossible to eradicate. Hardwick says he doesn't know what the advent of the coyote will mean for the gray fox in South Florida. When different species of the canine family inhabit the same locale, intense aggression is the norm.

"This enmity appears to be characteristic of interaction between foxes and other members of the dog family," David MacDonald, the world's leading authority on the red fox, writes in Running With The Fox. "It may arise because, apart from differences in their size, members of the dog family are very similar. It is a basic principle of ecology that competition will prevent two species from occupying the same niche."

Hardwick adds: "There's going to be a lot of competition for food. And it won't be a fair fight. The coyote's average weight is from twenty to 50 pounds. The gray fox is from seven to fourteen. It's hard to say, but the 1990s might be the last hurrah for foxes down here."

Meanwhile, beginning this week and continuing through early March, Greater Miami's foxes will be especially visible, mobile, and audible as mating season drives both sexes into new territory, searching for companionship. In some parts of the city, the chilling call of the gray vixen - a high-pitched, strangling scream repeated several times - has aleady begun.