Song Dogs

I woke up last night to a choir of yips and crying, somewhere out in the fields. I was startled at first, unsure where I was, in the sleep addled way of the newly roused. Then, laying there in the darkness, I listened closer. It was coyotes, talking to each other in the night. I couldn't tell how many there were, two at least, and out in the cold moonlight they mewled and whined and sang. It was...unpleasant. I've heard wild wolves howl, and heard coyotes before on numerous occasions, but being pulled out of sleep as I was by the eerie singing was unnerving. It was a cold January night, moonlit, and as I lay there trying to figure out where the coyotes called from, my heart raced. I was thinking about the animals out in the barn, concerned in a vague, unsettling way.

By the time I had fully woken up, I wasn't really worried for the safety of anything; the cows and horses and donkey were all safe, and even the pigs should be big enough to defend themselves, and certainly wouldn't be menaced huddled up together in their shed. But having something out there, even something as relatively harmless as a coyote, made me feel a surge of protective husbandry.

I have been seeing a coyote out in the back field fairly often recently, as it hunts for mice or voles beneath the snow. I've watched it pause and listen the leap, coming up with a small dark bundle that is quickly bolted down. Watching the coyote, I've been filled with conflicted emotions. I'm intrigued by the animal, like I am with most animals, and could just stand there with the binoculars for what seems like hours. But another part of me, a part that I sort of hate to admit, wants to go get the rifle.

I don't have a bloodlust, or an urge to wantonly kill anything, not like I may of had as a single-minded child, but when I see the coyote I feel a need to, I guess the best word would be 'defend' things from the predator. There may not be any danger from the coyote now, but in the spring there will be chickens here, and perhaps someday sheep. And, with the coyotes still here, I will lose some of those animals, to them.

But I haven't gone for the rifle yet, and even when I lose a chicken, I don't intend to. I'm committed to living and letting live. I'll be troubled as much by foxes and by the resident red tails, and I wouldn't dream of killing them. My thoughts on the coyotes shouldn't be any different. I can't decry the treatment of wolves by ranchers out west and simultaneously murder coyotes here; I don't want to be a hypocrite in that way.

But I understand now where the blind hatred that drives 'predator control' comes from. It's not a rational thing, it's primal. I have no reason to despise the coyote, when all it is doing is living as best it can. And logically, I know that, and try to appreciate the coyote for what it is, a cunning, often striking beast. But hatred, fear, aren't logical feelings. Sometimes they're just howls in the night, shivering, lonesome, and hungry.