CyberCoyote


There is this God awful screeching and sounds of a cat putting up a healthy fight. Lots of thrashing and crunching of dry leaves covering our hillside this time of year. It seems an eternity but only took less than a couple of seconds at best. All had fallen silent save for the almost quiet sound of my coyote padding his way down our hill in a hurry having been startled by my screaming.

Crying, thinking, "Dear God let my kitten already be dead." Not wanting our cat to suffer more than it already had. The last I saw of that young tomcat was no more than the bushy tail of a coyote headed downhill, reflecting moonlight and lights of our city so far below. I am kind of hoping my coyote is a mom, maybe my kitten was a meal for hungry young pups really needing to eat.

This event brought me sadness, no doubt. However it did not bring me anger. My coyote was behaving in a perfectly natural way. He was hungry. Our kitten was no more than food to him. That coyote didn't sit up there on top of our hill thinking, "Hey, there's a little kitten. I am going to go down there, savage and kill that cat just for the heck of it." My coyote earned that meal through stealth and stalking. It was his right to kill and eat my kitten.

My right to live up here on top surrounded by hundreds of acres of Mother Nature is also earned, by stealth and stalking. I can't honestly say I didn't prey upon economic opportunity, often at the expense of someone. Profit is never had without somebody paying a price. Like out on our hill, it is survival of the fittest. Natural Laws apply, in a way, to society just as harshly as they do the night our kitten was carried off and eaten.

My coyote really isn't mine to claim. He or she is really just a part of a small pack of coyotes sharing several hundred acres of rugged hills with my few neighbors, my daughter and me. My guess is there are maybe six or eight of them claiming this territory. They don't hold a deed like we do, but this region is more their's than mine, than ours. This coyote is mine in a sense, my hilltop backyard is his personal hunting ground, but it is my terriority. Every night, if I am more quiet and sly than is my coyote, I can see him, or at least, see his shaky silhouette sitting on one of our huge boulders watching and waiting for some motion in the dark of night. He knows exactly what I look like. I am not so sure about my coyote, all I ever see are brief flashes of fur or tail in dim light of night.

I have seen what society does to them. Occasionally I see a coyote lying dead on a side of a road somewhere, most likely having been blinded and frozen by headlights of a car bearing down on him. Not long back, I watched city workers removing coyote bodies from a nearby riverbed. Those coyotes having been poisoned by our 'humane' society. They had received numerous complaints, from nearby residents, about coyotes eating their pets. One year, our city leaders, using their infinite wisdom, loaded our police helicopter with sharp shooters whom cruised up and down the riverbed shooting anything that remotely resembled a dog. It only lasted one day. Public protest was really heavy. That time, political concerns about votes cast favored Mother Nature's poor creatures. Now they quietly poison the coyotes.

In newspapers, we read stories of farmers and ranchers collecting a bounty on coyote tails resulting from claims they were devastating cattle and sheep herds. Ever read anything about a coyote taking down a full grown cow or sheep? It doesn't happen. It might be they occasionally take out a newborn lamb, but rare. I wonder if the ranchers and herders have thought about all the mountain lions and even bears also sharing geographic regions where those bounties are collected? Coyotes are very rugged individualists, they do not hunt in in packs, say like African hyenas do. In reality, coyote tails are nothing more than a little cash in somebody's pocket and perhaps the sickening satisfaction of having killed something.

Some time back our city leaders started another campaign against coyotes. This one is actually half way intelligent having been guided by animal rights activists. Our city started sending out flyers with our utility bills warning people about coyotes. They advised us not to leave pet food outside and to lock our pets inside at night. Good advice. I am guilty of not following those guidelines. We do feed coyotes, along with squirrels, raccoons, birds and other animals which will eat what I put out everyday. I am guilty for not locking my kittens inside at night. Somehow I feel guilty about denying my kittens their right to the freedom and the risks of living outside of a fancy cage. I would not want to be locked up everynight because their are rapists and murderers out there in darkness. It is a chance I take in turn for being free. I may be killed out in the dark, but I will die free as Nature intended.

Just like in my kitten's world, we people learn as we grow older there are risks in life. Most of us survive those risks, some do not. My kittens are not just ordinary everyday domesticated cats. Uphere, along with all the other animals, we have wild cats. Not feral, wild. There are only four wild cats I know of. Mama cat was on the hill with my kitten that night but what kind of match is she for a coyote? Now we have three kittens instead of four. In the past, only one kitten out of her litters would survive. They grow, they learn and they die, always naturally.

When we moved to this home, one of the first things we did is to get to know the animals. This is their home and we are intruders. Mama cat had a litter. One kitten survived. I was able to catch her kitten, Pastel, now full grown, fat and neutered, living with a neighbor I convinced to adopt him. Her second litter, one more survivor, now a pretty and a spoiled neutered cat named Miss Kitty living with yet another neighbor. Both of those cats are not 'normal' cats. They are skitterish, half wild and will only be touched by those who provide for them. Nobody else can even come within twenty feet of them.

So now it is my turn. Several months back, being frustrated with not being able to catch Mama cat nor find her lair, I took on a responsibility of really putting effort into helping out Mother Nature. Mama was swollen with kittens yet again and I was not about to let her litter be picked off one by one.

Arrangements were made to go on the properties of my neighbors. Several days of hiking, literally hiking, around our hills proved fruitless. When an animal does not wish to found, it will not be found. On an early evening, I am walking down a foot path leading to an elderly lady's home. She has fresh vegetables from her garden for me in trade for a delight of having a visitor. She is lonely in her winter of life. Her vegetables are not the reason I am going to visit, just for a reward in a sense.

Mother Nature graces me this cool early March evening. Rounding some huge boulders and a very high cliff separating my elderly friend and me, I hear a single very faint 'mew'. Excited, I run back home for a tall ladder and some gloves. Knocking on my elder's door, I ask her for an empty vegetable basket and explain why. This is about the most excitement she has in years. We are going to catch wild kittens!

Leaning my ladder up against our cliff is no problem, Mama cat's lair is only about twenty to twenty-five up, well hidden under decades growth of English Ivy. I an so surprised by all the small hidden trails running back and forth on the cliff face under the ivy. Getting to the kittens is a problem. Some branches of the ivy are as big as my arm and behind them, Mama cat hissing and ready to claw my eyes out. She fears coyotes but this is her home. Nothing would be allowed to intrude. No problem, I am in very good hands. My elderly friend is holding the bottom of my ladder, "Oh Kira, be careful. Kira, oh God, don't fall." I can't help but give Mama cat a big smile. There is so much love in her voice down below, along with a sparkle of delight in doing something really different, something youthfully exciting.

Well, we eventually do catch those kittens. I am not too much worse for the wear. Clawed up arms, old ivy in my hair which is sticking to my forehead from all my sweat along with a dirty dusty smile on my face in holding up a vegetable basket full of month old kittens for my loving neighbor to take childish delight in. Her vegetables, somehow, were extra delicious that night during supper.

One of our kittens is near death. He is the runt of her litter. It takes an eye dropper, kitty formula and time but he eventually grew to be fat, spoiled and, eaten by a coyote.

Today Mama cat is much more friendly having watched me feed her kittens, play with them, and having watched them come running to me when I called them. Next week I am going to try and lure her into a cage with fancy cat food. A quick visit to the vet's office and she will be once again free and free from any future litters. We have enough cats now. Nature's balance seems just right.

Next time a coyote darts out in front of you, slam on your brakes, swerve, crash your car, do whatever it takes. Please don't kill that coyote, it just might be a mama taking a dead cat back home for her hungry pups. It might be my coyote I love so dearly. God I wish I could quit crying over the harshness of a natural world. Funny, I rarely cry about our harsh civilized world. Guess my priorities are different than most.