These are perfect learning moments. Wild animals are wild animals, even in captivity and their behavior can not be completely predicted.
Once, while sitting at a park, during the great local coyote panic that was before COVID, we used to go to a park and watch a lone coyote go through at sunset and scavenge. At sunset a lone coyote would come to the park and scavenge and hang out, driving people away in fear. A local took to admonishing me for bringing my kid around to watch a terrible and deadly animal from a distance. The coyote would often sit on the grass after making her rounds and then dart across the grass, look around and then dissapear into the shrubs. One day, while watching the beast, to the horror of the woman as she was threatening and admonishing me on my parenting skills, the coyote caught a gopher, and ran into the bushes. The woman behind us screamed, and after a beat my kid turns to her and said, with a slightly up beat tone, “circle of life.”
That person eventually went from threatening to call the police and CPA to actually doing it. The day the police showed up my daughter was scared, thinking they were going to take me away. After asking me questions, taking my name down, etc. they said they would talk to the person, who bolted from the park. She apparently had been calling for days and they had to check up on her complaint. I explained to my daughter that the two most dangerous things at the park were the cars in the parking lot and the street, and some of the adults that were there too.
