A "coyote" is someone who profits from smuggling immigrants across the US-Mexico border. It is also a stereotypical animal as a cowardly scavenger. In The Tortilla Curtain, TC Boyle draws frequent parallels between coyotes prowling the edges of civilization and Mexicans scavenging and working on the fringes of an upscale white neighborhood. Boyle also uses Delaney Mossbacher's attitude toward coyotes to both parallel and foreshadow his waning sympathy for illegal immigrants. Finally, he uses coyote attacks as a metaphor for white insecurity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Although coyotes are mentioned several times in the early chapters, it is not until chapter three that their metaphorical role emerges. In this chapter, a coyote climbs Delaney's fence to steal one of the family's terriers. The dramatic scene, with the “dun” (brown) coyote holding a “tense white form” between its teeth, metaphorically illustrates white fear of Mexican immigrants. At this point, Delaney is still a devout liberal humanist and animal lover. He believes coyotes have a right to be there and that human intrusion and "treating them like amenities" is what's causing problems. In the column he wrote before the attack, he raved about coyotes, calling them "four-legged wonders" and listening to their cries as he "would listen to Mozart or Mendelssohn, lulled by their passionate beauty" (79). . This idealistic view aligns with his belief that illegal immigrants have the right to be in America and enter his neighborhood if they choose. He opposes closing the community and building a wall to keep them out. However, the inevitable construction of the wall is foreshadowed by his decision to erect an even taller fence to thwart the coyotes. Throughout the novel, parallels are drawn between coyotes and Cándido, who represents all illegal immigrants. After his dog died, Delaney blamed people who fed the coyotes. He remembers finding a red and white striped Kentucky Fried Chicken box left behind someone's house. Much later in the story, this image resurfaces as Cándido raids a dumpster, collecting the red and white striped cans of chicken to feed himself and America. Then there is the scene in which America sees a coyote and stares at it “so long and so hard that she began to hallucinate, to imagine herself in those eyes looking out” (179). His identification with the coyote reinforces Boyle's symbolism. Another parallel is drawn in Delaney's second column, when he talks about coyotes chewing through irrigation pipes to get water. By the end of the novel, Cándido has taken on the characteristics of a coyote: he diverts water from a sprinkler system, flies into yards, and, most dramatically, eats Delaney's third and final pet. It fits Delaney's description of coyotes as "cunning, versatile, hungry, and unstoppable" (215). By the time Delaney wrote his second column, he had lost his remaining dog to coyotes and knew that taller fences were not a solution. He still opposes animal trapping, but now admits that “some sort of control must be applied” (212). If he hesitates to “blame” the coyotes and recognizes the benefits they bring, he “can't help but also think of the missing animals, the traces of suspicion, the next baby..