Coyote Returns

Coyote Returns

You can hear them at night; a pack of 50 or 100, or maybe just 20, down in the canyon yipping and yowling for a good long while after a siren goes off. I've never seen a pack, but I have seen a solitary coyote hanging out by the turn in the road, my headlights illuminating its opaque, glass-colored eyes, when I come home from work. I've wondered if this isn't the same lone coyote that visits next door in the middle of the day, looking for a handout from my neighbor Thea.

Thea started feeding a coyote two years ago, when it was a toddler. I told her, pleaded with her, that it was wrong to feed a wild animal and, much to my surprise, she agreed; she promised to stop but then she didn't. I felt helpless to do anything about it: my neighbor is old and lonely. The coyote was her friend.

I hadn't seen the coyote for three or four months; I'd missed its absence, for no matter what you say, having a wild animal nearby can send shivers down your spine. It's thrilling, yet....it's still wrong. I was sitting down to write, when, out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash, it was the coyote back in Thea's yard!

I heard Thea calling to the coyote, "Come, come. Come, come," in her German accent, as she placed food on the ground. I grabbed my video camera and ran outside. You can see in the video, the coyote looking to the left (Thea), then looking straight ahead (me) and the dilemma he finds himself in. He doesn't know what to do: here's a witness to his forsaking his wild coyote ways, and I imagine, he's a little bit embarrassed. Later, he plops down in the grass in Thea's lower yard, smelling the flowers (a true Ferdinand, the coyote), passing a peaceable afternoon. 

Coyote biding his time until I leave. 

After 45 minutes of taking in the breezes and catching bugs, he goes back to dine at Thea's table.

To view on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdes2M53RqA

HOWL

This is wildly off the subject but I didn't realize that today, June 3, was Allen Ginsberg's 85th birthday. I found out through Peter Hale's terrific blog, The Allen Ginsberg Project, subtitled, An Allen Ginsberg Gallimaufry, a word I had to look up—"a confused jumble or medley of things." But his blog doesn't seem confused; it has a point (and good photos) and that point is sharing facts and wisdom of the Beat Generation and of everything and one who was spawned from the gluttonous, gymnastic, gyzym of Ginsberg's genius. 

So what got me there? I was searching for a picture of Carl Solomon and what his true role in HOWL, to whom the third section is dedicated, was. I noticed that his Wikipedia page was recently updated, so he still means something to someone, or perhaps to many. He was a crazy sonofabitch but as sane as Ginsberg when they found each other in the sanatorium. They remained friends until the end of Solomon's life.

Carl Solomon and Allen Ginsberg at the West End Bar, 1978, 

(photo found on Peter Hale's blog)

Spanning the great divide of being in NYC with being back in LA is sometimes hard to do. For the first few days when I'm back, I feel numb, dumb, lacking in energy. But what peps me up is finding something that, no matter how distant, bridges the gap between both cities. Rereading Ginsberg's HOWL, the section for Carl Solomon, that speaks so holy and wholey of NYC, woke me up again.

My own HOWL woke me up yesterday, early morning. First the crows making a racket on our railing, then caw caw cawing overhead; 

Crows overhead

Then a swish and movement in Thea's backyard:

I snuck outside along the walkway between our houses, and saw my old neighbor Thea putting two plates of food down on the ground next to the canyon, and a second later, a coyote cautiously approaching...

I would say with almost certainty this is the same coyote I saw in the canyon at this time last year, when it was only a toddler. I worried then that Thea might be feeding it, but never imagined she'd be so blatant, deliberately putting out food for it to guzzle down. And guzzle down it did, indicating it's probably dependent on my neighbor—in her delusions of goodwill and ignorance—for the food it eats.

...but I freaked it out!

Freaked out!

It caught me peeking around the corner to take its picture. For the next hour, it filled the canyon with its growls and barks, howls and HOWLS, pursuing me, through the canyon, to the back of my house (how did it know where I lived?) and approaching in its awkward, frightened, vulnerable, sad way. 

Do I call animal control? Do I let Thea continue feeding it? What is the right thing to do?

You can hear it's yips and yaps, along with the crows, here: