This sunset looks like a coyote!
It's Terrific Tuesday again. How are things in your neck of the woods?
The coyotes or as the old cow poke might say, "Kai yoats" are driving me crazy. For the past couple of weeks they have been haunting our farm particularly with the recent full moon. They howl and sing and get every dog within miles to bark furiously. Including mine and the farm beagles. it keeps me awake, then gives me spooky dreams.
Thought I'd share an old coyote story from my previous life. In the summer of 1984, I vacationed in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico for 12 days. This was life prior to parenthood and with husband number one, Bobby Benson, may he rest in peace.
The Preamble:
We made a trip out to Yellowstone National Park. Hubby had arranged for us to spend the night away from civilization in a cabin. It seemed like we drove all day. When we arrived, a Momma and almost grown pair of Grizzly cubs were walking down the forlorn road in front of our cabin. I promptly refused to spend the night. Having watched, "Night of the Grizzly" with Clint Walker too many times, I am still positively convinced that a wooden cabin door would not stop a hungry Grizzly bear. Looking back now, the Far Side cartoon of the polar bears and the Igloo come to mind when I think about that cabin and those Grizzly bears, "Hmm, just like I like 'em crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside."
So, I refused to stay and we had to drive all the way back to civilization. The hubby was not amused. Later that week we drove through Colorado and rode that insane cog railroad up the side of Pike's Peak so he paid me back. From there we trekked southward to the cow's tail of the world, Las Vegas, New Mexico and spent the night in a hotel with velvet paintings, shag carpet and a sign by the front desk that said, "We rent swimwear." And please do not get Las Vegas, New Mexico confused with Las Vegas, Nevada. They are poles apart yet similar in a gaudy, not so good way. Thus I come to my coyote tale.
The Terrible Night of the Howling Coyote:
By now you may have guessed I am interesting traveling companion. Our friends, the Bishops, had a ranch in North Central New Mexico in dot on the map called Lindrith just near enough to a town called Cuba to have some civilization close. Kind of like just having Fincastle by itself some where in the middle of nowhere, about as far away as Pulaski County, though not nearly as quaint as Fincastle or full of fast food like Pulaski!
We drove out the five mile dirt driveway full of arroyos and snakes and desert to their little ranch house. When we got there no one was home. The house was locked up tight as a drum and Old Shep the wonder dog slept so soundly he didn't even wake up to check us out. We decided to wait as going back to Cuba seemed fruitless.
We waited and waited some more. In the darkness the sky lit up with a million stars. No ground clutter light out there where never a discouraging word is heard. It was spectacular. Then the coyotes began to howl. Not unlike the bears theory associated with a movie, I thought of Stephen King's book Cujo, except Cujo Juniors in a pack of Coyotes.
They seemed to surround us. I rolled up the window of our rental car. The howlers sounded like they were everywhere taking turns, building my imagination in the dark. Hundreds had me surrounded, I was sure of it.
An hour passed and there we sat, still in a stellar heaven surrounded by coyotes. Another passed and I couldn't take it any more. That last Pepsi Cola back in Cuba needed to be released. The coyotes continued to howl out in the fields and on the mesa and mountain.
It was like something out of the Twilight Zone. My camel bladder gave out on me and I had to bear the hubby chuckles as I crept from the shot gun seat and went around in front of the car. There I assumed the position and dropped my shorts and well never mind what happened next.
Something cold and wet nosed me on my bare behind. I screamed as loudly as I could and leapt on to the hood of the car. My heart raced and certain I had been attacked by a Wiley Coyote, I continued to scream.
Like most men, the hubby's reaction was slow. It seemed an hour passed before he flipped on the high beams, me on the hood screaming and him outside the car with cassett tape case in his hand to wield as a weapon against Wiley Coyote.
What a surprise.
Old Shep the wonder dog whom we soon discovered had cataracts and couldn't hear well, had drifted up to the car and well he still had a good nose so he was trying to ID me by his sense of smell.
Indeed I had not been attacked by anything other than a deaf and blind old shephard. The husband laughed so hard, he scared all the coyotes away. We never heard another howl for the rest of the evening. Later that night our friends made it back to the ranch. They had been delayed by a train and in the years before a cell phone, if there is even service out there now, had no way to tell us. We had waited through the terrible dark night of the howling coyote. Or howling Cathy depending on who told the story. And survived to tell about it.
See you next week!
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