Coyote conversations

Someone in my community thought it appropriate to shoot a coyote from their car at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night.

I had been having some "conversations" with that coyote. The coyote had become used to running through my yard when the house was vacant, and there were some animal bones in the yard when I first arrived last year, from California. I threw the bones into the brush and, shortly thereafter, got into an accident that broke my arm.

It was a cold, cold winter last year, my first year in Washington State. During that time I did a lot of arm and wrist exercises, and now I am nearly back to full strength. I took off the summer from indoor exercise and picked blackberries and so forth.

Anyway, the coyote had left scat at the road in front of the house and, after I moved in, started leaving his poop in the yard which, in the winter, kind of melts away pretty quickly in the rain. After my arm started getting better and the days got warmer I started burying the scat when I found it, returning it to earth and keeping the scent from the surface.

At that point, the coyote started "learning" and I realized he was a lot like my dog. He wanted to know where it was "okay" with me to do his business. At first, he tried going where my dog goes. And his poop got buried. Then he took it to a wooded area in the back yard. I buried the poop. Then, a couple months ago, he finally took it back to the road as usual.

And I left it alone.

So he stopped pooping in my yard. And I was kind of proud of him. I only saw him once, at dusk, like a little golden lightening flash, running at top speed along the boundary line between my yard and the forest, as if separating our "turfs". I kind of miss that little guy. He was, like any dog, trying to get along.

I'm leery of coyotes as well, but they are Mother Earth's creatures just as we are and 10 p.m. is one of their hours. They have the night. We have the day. Keep yourself and your animals in at night, live and let live.