Coyote and Crow

“	Coyote: Oh hey! Free lunch! We get to eat this week! Max: Hush! I'm grifting! Crow: Aww, he doesn't seem to be dead. Coyote: Gimme a sec and we can check again. Max: Eep!	„
	~ the Coyote and the Crow picking a young Maxwell as their new prey.

Coyote and Crow are minor antagonists in Rick Griffin's webcomic Housepets!, appearing as the main antagonists of Maxwell's flashback during the chapter "The Maxwell Thing".

As the name implies, they're a pair of predators, one a female coyote and the other a female crow, who are down on their luck with their hunting initiatives, until they meet Maxwell, then just a kitten, and give chase, ending up at odds with the dog, Rufus. Although minor antagonists, they were essential to Maxwell's backstory and him finding his current home in Babylon Gardens.

They both first appeared in the strip "Lunch Is Served".

Biography[]

The Coyote and Crow were predators that operated in the countryside near the american town of Babylon Gardens. They were implied to be unlucky predators, apparently in part due to the farm dog, Rufus, protecting many of their potential prey, like he'd do with the cat, Maxwell.

When relaxing in the hot springs that Keene Milton had ordered, Maxwell and the other pets eventually got bored, so Max's girlfriend, Grape, asked him to explain whatever past he and the late Rufus, had had, as the dog had kissed Max on the cheek while visiting from Heaven, to Grape's curiosity. Max started narrating from the very beginning, recounting how he was a stray and an orphan and roamed the streets in search of opportunities, making ends barely meet by assisting people in creating cute cat memes.

Eventually, the exhausted kitty decided to lie face-first on a countryside road to guilt-trip possible passerbys into taking him in. Instead, he was found by the Coyote and the Crow, who hadn't eaten the whole week, and the two believed Max was dead and prepared to have lunch. Unfortunately for them, Max was alive and told them to keep it quiet, so as to not ruin his scam. Crow was disheartened by this, but Coyote opted to kill Max herself so her and her partner could eat. They gave chase to the young kitten for hours on end and, upon arriving at a farm, Coyote had Max in the palm of her hands. Luckily for Max, however, Rufus was there and he saved the kitten by hitting the predator in the face with a shovel.

Rufus took Max in and had him act as a mouser along with all the other cats in the barn. Max was not a good mouser at all, to the point where the mice mocked him by hanging a bell around his neck while he was sleeping, and, three weeks later, Max grew tired of the working life and left the farm to set off on the road once again. The Coyote and Crow, however, were waiting for him just outside the farm and chased the kitten again. In his panic, Max didn't think about running back to the barn and, eventually, tripped and fell into a pit, breaking his ankle.

Having lost Max, Coyote and Crow set off to look for him, the former scouting the ground, while the latter searched from above. Immobilized, Max spent hours alone in the hole and eventually accepted he'd starve to death, but, luckily, that's when Rufus, who had been looking for Max after his disappearance from the farm, found the kitten. Rufus wanted to return to the farm and call for help, but Max was afraid the Coyote would've found him while Rufus was away, so Rufus stayed with Max until it was light out and proceeded to nurture the cat back to health and find a home in Babylon Gardens.

Max never ran into the Coyote again after that and their fates are a mystery, though if they continued being unfortunate at hunting as they appeared in the comic, they likely died of starvation. When Max's flashback ended, Max's friend, Peanut was disappointed that the two predators had simply left the story and that there was no epic final confrontation between Rufus and the Coyote. Peanut would later entertain the animals in the hot spring with a much more dramatic retelling of Max and Rufus' story, including an intense final battle against the Coyote and the Crow.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

Coyote is the second character in the comic to be struck in the face with a shovel, the first being fellow canid villainess, Duchess.
"Best Ending" is the only strip in which Coyote appears without Crow (although, in the strip, it is Peanut's drawing of her rather than Coyote herself), while Crow never appears without Coyote.
Although there is no record of coyotes and crows partnering up in real life, collaboration between wolves and ravens, on the other hand, is a real life phenomenon that's progressively becoming more and more common, as raven flocks alert wolves packs of prey or carcasses and get a share of the catch in return, and ravens have even been observed playing with wolf cubs.

Navigation[]

Villains

Animals

Humans

Supernatural Creatures

Pete the Gryphon | Demons of Pandemonium (Eudoant, NegaBreel, The Forgotten) | Temple Monsters |