May 24, 2009

From my notes. August 2007 :

A bolus of hair-filled scat tells us that coyotes have returned to the forest. Bill spends long minutes in a sniffing frenzy,

Dog?
Not-dog.
Here.
And here.

Pulls me to the brushy places at the edge of the trail.

Here!
Here!
Here!

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We began to see more scat on the forest trails. Sometimes there would be new piles every day. The feral rabbits disappeared, one by one. We found their remains; one time bloody and raw, as if we had interrupted a meal.

Reports of coyote sightings began to predominate the forest gossip.

~We saw one on the spine trail, early yesterday. It watched us, then disappeared.

~Two of them flanked us as we walked by the old hatchery, escorted us up the trail and then turned back towards the lake.

~They have a den.

Our first sighting came last spring. Mid April, on a side path ripe with Trilliums. I stopped to admire them, stood quietly as my attention wandered from their sunlit flowers upward to the voices of the birds around us.

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From my notes. April 2008:

There is no warning. Just Bill lunging away from me, snapping the connection between leash and collar. He's gone before I can regain my balance. All I see is a grey blur leaping over a fallen snag, a second red blur in close pursuit. There is barking. Bill's voice and a second. Sharper, intense.

And silence. I call,

Bill! Come!!

No response. Bill always returns when I call.

Bill! Bill-the-Dog! Come!

Rustling in the brush. A grey head pops up, yellow eyes watching me. One small coyote steps forward onto the path, ears up, tail down. Stops. Barks the sharp bark. Again. Again.

I respond,

You go on now. Go do your business. Go. Go!

and look away from the yellow eyes, worried now that there is no sign of my dog. Work my way back towards the trail, where I can loop around the coyote to the area where Bill was headed when I saw him last.

The barking continues. I walk up the trail to a second side path and am relieved to see a red shape coming towards me. Bill's size. Bill's shape. Bill's bushy tail. Bill's pointed ears.

Bill! Come here you silly .....

Yellow eyes.
Not Bill.
Not-dog.

The barking continues, behind me now. I back away from the red coyote, understanding that these two, grey and red, are a pair. Her barking brought him to her. This is their house today. I'm the uninvited guest.

My loop around the coyotes has just gotten longer. They watch silently as I turn and walk down the trail. They do not follow me.

I find the main spine trail at the bottom of the hill, head south, calling,

Bill-the Dog!! Come!!

Walk up past the places where the two side paths join the spine trail, cautious now at the prospect of meeting the coyotes again. The paths are empty. The spine trail is empty.

Here, Bill!

Walk up past the Grandfather tree to where the spine trail begins to bend. Two Bald Eagles call to each other above me.

Bill is sitting in the middle of the spine trail, just past the bend. Ears down, panting. I call him. He remains seated, quickly glances to his left into the trees, then right. Pants harder. I call him again and he rises slowly, tail tucked between his legs, makes more quick jumpy glances to either side as he slouches towards me. He curls himself around my legs when we meet, buries his face in the space between my knees, trembling.

I snap on the leash. He pulls me hard towards home.

Photo: Bill-the-Dog. Copyright, C. M. Alexander 2009