Yotes

These guys have been circling around. Crossing pastures, head up, tail hanging low, trotting with their tongues bouncing along. Butt down, tails tucked, as they scritter across the highway. Evenings their calls echo up from the creek with their compatriots answering from the valley.

Yotes have found their way here to the house, crawled right down on to the work table into sketch books, onto canvas storage baskets, and paper paintings. Their knowing eyes and clever grimace hide out somewhere in the back of my head, flashing across whenever I lay my head on my pillow, walking across my dreams.

My first experiences with coyotes came relatively late. I chuckle at that as they are everywhere now. Cities and towns both have their share of these dog wolves who are canny and cool in our presence. I was twelve when I first heard their yips echoing through the black flatland where I grew up. My first thought was to go out into the night to see if I could find them. My dad put a swift stop to that bit of silliness.

Now, their calls are a constant companion. A sort of auditory northern lights for us, commenting to each other as we finish our chores for the day, whoo, that one’s close or, listen, the pups are out tonight. I remember one Sunday fall afternoon we cruised country roads down through a pasture to the river, bird dog in the back of the truck, catching the wind with her wire-hair. Walking along the banks, Molly, then a young dog, moved through the bush when a call came out of a bluff about forty feet away. Nothing quite so eerie as that. The sound rose, hovered, swayed and shimmered in the still warm air. We’d been watched and had been told.

Our general rule has always been distance. Make sure they keep their distance, we keep ours. Coyotes live here in the same land we do. The mice, rabbits, birds and berries are theirs to take. We give chase in the pasture if we happen upon them to keep a safe circle around our animals and children. During calving, we keep the cows close by, especially heifers who in the confusion of first birth may not have the wherewithal to put their heads down and give chase to curious, wild canines.

I’ve raised a gun in earnest to one only once. On a Thanksgiving weekend, I looked out of my window to see the profile of a dog with pointed ears in our tree line. Coyote. Our small children, aged eighteen months, four and five years were seated at the dining room, having come in moments before from playing outside near the house. The chickens were out, scratching about in the same area. A second look. Yes, definitely coyote. I hastily put on my jeans, as I’d been mid-change to go help my husband finish a corral, grabbed the .22, three shells and ran outside, barefoot, through the garden. Her mouth was full of our rooster. She didn’t run. She looked at me and then kept eating. I shot. Once. Damn, in the leg. Twice, she ran. I swore. Chased her down through the long grass, and finished it up.

I wrote that about two weeks ago. And since then I’ve done nothing but struggle with its presence here. I’ve been wondering how this recounting will present itself. Will it come across as brash, red neck impulsion? The inner workings, even now as I remember the pointy eared silhouette standing in the grass, was a mashed up bunch of certainty, protection, knowing something is awry and needing action. Coyotes keep their distance. We keep ours. One that comes in right tight, at lunch, in the midst of sound and heavy scent of domestic dogs and humans is an outlier. Remember, this was no urban coyote navigating constant traffic, sussing out the what’s what of humanity, our patterns and general goings-on. No, this coyote was one of those who might call out farm dogs at night or sneak in to take a chicken or two if the coop door is left open from dusk to dawn. But even that, that’s more the domain for foxes, skunks, raccoon and weasels. Coyotes keep their distance.

A brazen young yote, coming to the house, where it can hear my husband metres away hammering at a corral, radio blaring, with the scent of kids and dog fresh in the yard, is more than an inconvenient neighbourhood addition. The kids had been playing right where the chickens were scratching, within five feet of the house, in the bright of day. Thinking on this side of it, I think I would do the same thing. I say that while understanding the gravity of taking a life. No one creature ever wants to die and I am not keen to be the one to do the job. If I could do anything differently, I would have remembered to breathe, as the shot would have been cleaner and quicker. I’m not sure if the game situation was difficult that year as our employee had also been approached by a coyote while out walking along the fields. The coyote wouldn’t leave and persistently circled closer. Another story came out about a girl, late at night, whose truck had run out of gas, being forced up into the box of her truck and calling the RCMP. Three coyotes had her circled. Tough conditions make for tough calls for everyone, even animals. I wasn’t prepared to chance it and made a tough call of my own.

No, the yotes I know tend to be the ones who look at you, a quarter mile away, cock their head, stare in alert curiousity and then walk or trot on, nose down. They share entries with ravens and magpies in my book of sober respect paid. Please know this is not of those stories where I saddle up, strap on the ammo belt, and ride out to shoot any coyote daring to show itself. No. Not at all. A prairie landscape without chances of spotting one of these dogs is bland and austere. The thoughts of these bundles of travelling teeth and lanky muscle, with their inquisitive head tilt, watchful eyes and then nonchalant turn, not being there makes for a landscape that is too quiet.

I think this story appears as a personal reminder no relationship is pure and golden. They will play out as trails sometimes meandering into darker woods. There’s always going to be the grit that hurts, wounds and makes for lessons learned about our own weaknesses. Nothing deserves a pedestal, perched and pristine. Nature surely doesn’t. Nature is to be respected but certainly not, from my view, emblemized or reduced to pretty things held above life and death and what those two words come down to in the day to day workings. Working with nature, and within nature, means I need to be humble, not extend myself more than I ought and at times it will mean that nature treads in ways I don’t feel comfortable.

Still, coyotes are here. All the signs nature, myth and science can muster tell us they will be here for all time. They are an eternal presence. Coyotes are the only large predator to have both expanded their range and increased their population as humanity slurps up larger portions of the land. They are the wily fur beasts who are a reflection of us. They come to live within the landscapes of our days and imaginations and, at times, sidle up, cross the hearth and lend themselves to pretty pictures.