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

A Tale About...

Once, there was a Crow...

and Crow would caw whenever it sensed danger...


CAW, CAW,


One day, it looked down from its perch, and saw a....

Coyote...

 and Crow cawed and cawed.

Coyote's appearance meant that food was coming, and so, other animals were on their way too.

Skunks. CAW CAW


and raccoons and possums. CAW CAW CAW


But mainly, 

Coyote. CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW


Crow looked down from its perch and saw, too, the old witch who fed the Coyote. She lived in a green house, with a green hedge and a green car, and whose complexion was a little green. 

She didn't feed the little children she kept in the oven, but she fed the wild animals that came to her door. She loved the animals more than the little children, and more than her neighbor, who had asked her not to feed the wild animals. 


At one time—about a week ago—the witch had told her neighbor that she wanted to have a good sense of community; the neighbor hadn't realized that what she meant was a community of wild things.


The witch whispered sweet nothings to the Coyote, as Coyote waited for its meal. She told the Coyote to be a good boy, Werden ein guter Junge; then cautiously she approached, while Coyote looked up at the bowl she held in both hands. 

They understood each other; one was wild, and the other, lonely, or crazy, or both.

The neighbor stayed hidden behind the hedges, because she didn't want the Coyote to bark at her; also, she didn't want to be turned into jello by the witch. She knew that witches can do stuff like that— turn bones into halva, or turn coyotes into humans.

End of story?  To be continued...CAW CAW