Local Wildlife, Atlanta Suburbs

The little tyke is asleep at last, and I'm trying to get some writing done. Blogging sometimes gets the ideas flowing.

It's hard to switch gears to fantasy worlds from the grim gritty reality of trying to get the little one to eat ANYTHING other than fruit. Also from the grim gritty reality of grim gritty reality, where it's a fine and wonderful thing that the child is fond of the Swiffer and not so wonderful that he's scared by the vacuum cleaner. The dust wolves were getting scary, though, so he had to put up with at least some of the roar and whoosh this morning.

Speaking of dust wolves, we had a peculiar canid running around our neighborhood last week. We heard something that sounded like a dog in dire trouble in the wooded lot next door, and the creature ran away when my husband went out to check on it. A night or two later, I caught something sable-ish, pointy-eared, and long-tailed in my headlights near the elementary school a block away. I pulled into the lot to do the whistle-and-coax routine, got a better look, and instead said out my window, "You're not a dog, are you?"

Cheeky coyote looked back at me, not at my headlights, and said pretty plainly, "Nope."

"You don't need any help, do you?"

"Not a bit," said coyote, standing calmly at the edge of another wooded lot.

"All right then," I said, and turned the car around as the critter vanished into the woods.

It looked like a young one, and after one more yap-fest I haven't heard it around again, so it may have been passing through on a quest for territory, or it may have been shot. Sad to say, this suburban neighborhood has a fair amount of shooting going on now and again, and when our roof was checked recently for damage, a bullet turned out to by lying atop our den. That's the sort of thing that puts my sympathies with the coyote. Mowgli is never out alone, of course, and generally has an honor guard of dogs who weigh probably from five to forty-five pounds more than any coyote, never mind that young one. I doubt Master Coyote takes passes through our yard if he can go around, in fact.

Still, he's something to consider if we decide to get a few hens!