What exactly constitutes a pest, so far as the Western ecosystem is concerned, depends on whom you ask. I think everyone here, at least, can agree that the brown marmorated stink bug is a pest. After all, it’s an invasive species, and no one likes them. Are the deer in my neighbourhood pests? I don’t think so; my neighbours who garden more than I do disagree. And then you get into the carnivores, and that’s a whole Thing. Wolves, coyotes, cougars, bobcats—they’re vital to a healthy ecosystem in the US West, and an awful lot of people who live here think things would be a whole lot better if they’d all go away despite not knowing much about what it would really look like if they did.

This is another cartoon featuring the coyotes dubbed “Bent-Tail” and “Junior” in Disney parlance. They’re in the desert, searching for food, when they see a ranch, which they assume to be easy pickings. They see chickens and sneak onto the ranch, hiding among other places behind Pluto’s doghouse. He wakes up, and there follows your standard “Pluto does guard duty” cartoon. He chases the coyotes. The coyotes try to steal chickens. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Honestly I think more about the title of this short than the short itself, because the short is kind of boring. We’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again. It won’t always be the coyotes; we’ve seen one where it was a rat, for example. But Pluto is doing a job. An animal tries to interrupt his job. Pluto chases the animal either to continue doing his job or as an aspect of his job. Gopher, turtle, rat, coyote, chipmunk—does it matter? It’s a whole heap of animals fighting.

It’s kind of hard to imagine what the ranch would be doing out there. It’s quite small. We don’t see animals other than the chickens and Pluto. There are no crops. I don’t recall any roads. It’s a small oasis, which makes you wonder how it would get water. Disney did at least one documentary about the environment in that region, and it’s a hard land. There’s not a lot of ways to make a living. There’s no way to grow most crops without a lot of irrigation, and there’s no way to raise most animals without bringing in pretty much everything you need.

Disney doubtless does not mean the title of this short to be ironic, but arguably it is. Bent-Tail and Junior are native to the region. In fact, genus Canis is native to the Americas and spread out from there, living in what is now the US Southwest and Mexico for about five million years. Technically that would include Pluto’s ancestors as well, but as a modern dog, he’s an interloper. The chickens are descended from an African species, I believe, and since we never see the ranch owners, it’s impossible to say about them. Either way, is it really the coyotes who are pests?

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