coyote calling

There is a reason I often refer to lions and bears and coyotes, oh my! when describing where I live.

Example: Tonight, I trotted outside, half pissed off at having to go searching through the car for a sucker that the boy bought today, in the dark, while it is approximately 28 degrees outside. Normally, I'd just say 'fuck it, it was only 25 cents' but since he bought it with his own money, that he earns for picking up his messes and putting away his clothes, I felt obligated to find the damn caramel apple sticky mess. So I go prancing out to the car, fuming in my head 'if he would just take care of his SHIT!', around the back of the car I go, reach out to open the door and an animal EXPLODES from underneath, racing for the field across the road. Usually, I would just convince myself it was a cat ( a really LARGE one, lightly colored) but the incidence of coyotes coming into our yard, investigating the small city population of wild cats we have living around the apartments put me in a slightly different state of mind. Merce has seen three in the yard. One, when she was going to lunch, darted out of the fenced in yard (no one closes their gates around here) and across the road in front of her. Then, recently, she heard some animal snuffling noises coming from just outside her window, got up out of bed, opened the curtains and the window and there were two, dashing through the gates, accompanied by howling only yards away.

How I got into the car and shut the door escapes me. I don't remember it. I remember looking around the floor for the sucker and a weapon, JUST IN CASE. And then, the howling started. From next door, from across the road and I became a mass of quivering wimp. I called Merce, half amused but more scared than I like to admit (good thing my cell was still in my car) and she talked me back into the house. Freaky.

One more coyote story. I have all sorts, but I'll spare you. The ones in Lake Tahoe were HUGE. Anyway, when I was about Ty's age (4-5 years) I remember meandering around in a grass field. The grass tall and dry, hot, with that earthy smell. I was picking flowers and every so often, I'd look up to see my dad, yards away, fixing fence, sweating in the sun. All of a sudden, he's screaming at me and my first thought is that he is pissed and ready to wring my neck for something. What, I didn't know. Anyway, he is saying something about coyotes and get his gun and pointing and where I had been a moment before is a coyote, peering through the 3 foot tall grass and not too far from it, the grass is dimpling and curving, another in the first one's wake. They had been following the scent and they knew whatever it was, was little but big enough, it would need two of them to take it down and carry it off. Even more freaky.

In spite of those stories, I feel like they are a part of me, of who I am. The lonely, mournful howls that cut through still blackness of night. The yip-yips of the pups in the springtime, joyful with freedom and the chase. The unity of the pack. I feel them somewhere inside of me, one with the nighttime wanderers.