On Web: Locations, locations

When Susan Stowers read here last month about coyotes in Seattle's Central District, she didn't entirely believe it.

Still, she'd also heard a coyote tale from a neighbor. Curious, Stowers did what curious people do these days: She made a mash-up. Stowers put up a Web site seeking to blend, or mash, two streams of information. One was a Google map of the Seattle area. For the other stream, she invited anyone spotting a coyote to report it, so she could track the wildlife with digital pin icons on the map.

What happened astonished her. Four weeks later, the map — nwcoyotetracker.googlepages.com — looks like a mammalian version of Hitchcock's horror classic "The Birds."

Coyotes are everywhere. In the Central District. Also next to I-5 on Capitol Hill. Near Sea-Tac airport. In West Seattle and Bitter Lake and Rainier Beach. In the parking lot of Boeing's Kent Space Center.

So far there are 125 sightings, and some hearings (one recounts being startled awake at 1 a.m. by a primal howling).

"I'm stunned at the response, at how much people are interested in charting the coyotes," Stowers says. "And also at how many coyotes there are and how they've infiltrated the city."

Her map is incomplete (it shows no coyotes near Discovery Park). And potentially misleading (the 25 pins near the Arboretum could all be the same coyote). Yet it's also unlike any map ever sold.

What Stowers did — use the people-connecting ability of the Internet to map a slice of life — is all the rage.

There are now maps of cheap gas stations (seattlegasprices.com). Of happy hours (unthirsty.com). Of Federal Way's graffiti (federalwaygraffiti.blogspot.com). Of Seattle's 911 calls (seattle911.com). Of the weather as reported from dozens of backyard stations (weatherbonk.com).

Almost anything can be a map. At first glance they look the same — pins on a drawing of the city. If you click the pins, the good ones spring to life.

Lostacotrucks.com maps nine local taco trucks, with links to health reports. Housingmaps.com, one of the first mash-ups, maps apartments for rent by price. If you click a pin you get the ad, usually with photos.

Some maps are too good to be true. Hotmaps sounds like the holy grail of this new cartography. It claims it can geo-locate "hot people in your area" who are looking for dates. But clicking on pins in my part of town unveiled a bottomless supply of former Southern-school cheerleaders.

I am getting older, but I think I would have noticed this feature of my neighborhood. Then again, that coyote invasion did sneak up on me.

Stowers says she's now worried her map shows so many coyotes it may spark a backlash against them.

I know what she means. Thanks to neo-geography, I now know 21 sex offenders live nearby (ml.waspc.org). And that a bunch of Seattleites just came down with vomiting and diarrhea (whoissick.org).

Maps are guides to lead you into the world. Some of this new era of maps makes me want to stay home.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.