“His brain decoded the image: a coyote had somehow managed to get into the enclosure and seize one of the dogs, and there it was, wild nature, up and over the fence as if this were some sort of circus act” (The Tortilla Curtain, 37). This quote describes Delaney running out of the door after a coyote, who had taken one of the Mossbachers' family dog in its jaws. However, it can be shown as a metaphor of migrants and the border. Like the coyotes, immigrants vault over the Mexico-U.S. border, and take what is not rightfully theirs. They sneak in to make money and to find food for their families, and, as many angry American citizens see it, steal the resources of Americans. The coyotes scale the Mossbachers' fence to hunt the dogs just as the
