blackbackedjackal:

This is probably my favorite piece of lost animation. I wasn’t planning to get something like this so soon after Peg but I had never even considered that I could even own something from this. I was doing a search to make a post about the short itself on my blog, but then on a whim I was like ‘huh, lemme check ebay, just to see’ and there was the fucking cel. I’ve been debating over this for days but ya’ll, I love coyotes, I love a good story, and I love animation. I had to make sure the story of this cel was told. 

The Coyote’s Lament aired on March 5th, 1961 on Walt Disney Presents. It was a 45 minute episode consisting of a few shorts featuring ‘Grandpappy’ Bent-Tail and Bent-Tail Jr., with a lovely and catchy song about the persecution coyotes suffered through due to western expansion and their relationships with dogs (Pluto) and humans.

Oh we once had a home where we just loved to roam and hunt rabbits and squirrels all day Then man moved West and did his durn best to chase all our viddles away… 

What’s so interesting is this was push from Walt Disney himself about ecological awareness in the 60′s about coyotes. An animal that today is still persecuted and senselessly hunted as pests and vermin. The ONLY reason I knew about this short was because I randomly tuned on Disney Channel at like 2am when I was kid. I remember watching the whole thing and loved the song. I was super young, so the fact I remembered this well enough to find the episode online later is nothing short of crazy. It was rehashed as Disney’s Coyote Tales in 1991, with a re-dub by Jim Cummings, which is even harder to find.

However, the story ends here. The short was never re-released and the only copies left are either on VHS or Lazerdisc. I fear without the very few uploads online (many of which have been taken down over the years) this would be lost unless for SOME reason Disney decided to remaster the original footage (that screenshot is the highest resolution I can find). I made a post about this short 7 years ago on this blog, but I didn’t have a big following at the time and the video I used has since been deleted. I literally was like ‘well this is an ideal time to talk about old/lost animal animation now that I can tell more people about it’ and then just happened to find the cel.

I’ll make a separate post with the song, but that’s the history behind the cel. As someone who loves and studies coyotes, this is such a heart-warming, charming, rare piece of pro-coyote media, and I’m really glad I can share the story with you all. 

Also fun fact: though I’m not sure if The Coyote’s Lament was the first use of the sound effect, there’s a part where Junior barks, and that same bark was later used in 101 Dalmatians :)