Coyotes in the Desert

Trigger warning...

Out east and through most of the country, cities keep the wilderness at bay. Clear boundaries between green and gray, water and glass.

But out here in the southwest desert, the city is at best a squatter sharing space. Dust blows seeds and tumbleweeds…and if you don’t sweep every so often, the incessant sand drifts up in corners sprouting tufty volunteer gardens of invasives and natives alike, taking root quickly and absorbing every drop of moisture and mineral they can reach.

Life in the desert has its perks. Spilled water? No problem. Don’t even need to swab it up because the air will do it for you in an hour or so anyway. Plus it’s beautiful. Stark. Humbling. Alive.

Desert cities bustle with life. Not just the usual mourning doves and sparrows and squirrels, or even the hawk who surveys the landscape from high in the barkless snag I hope my neighbor never cuts down.

But also down low, among the scuttling lizards and armored beetles. Roadrunners darting under juniper shadows like little dinosaurs terrorizing the minicosm. Living relics of an ancient time before concrete and steel, ruthless hunters slashing down for mice and leaping into the air for insects—and you don’t have to squint much to see small feathered models for the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

Out here even the plants know that the best defense is a good offense. Where cactus spines bore deeper into flesh and fingernails like microscopic harpoons, tattooing reminders to tread more carefully next time.

Where goathead seeds lurk underfoot like menacing caltrops laid by some miniature evil on a garden-gnome scale, waiting for unsuspecting flipflops and paws and bike tires.

the insidious goathead (aka puncturevine), basically lifesize on mobile

Never a dull moment around here. Be on your toes. Bring water and sunscreen. Both sunhat and sweatshirt.

The sun goes down quickly but glamorously under the big bowl of the sky, igniting whatever clouds remain and painting pastel portraits on westfacing mountain flanks. Accompanied by the whir of birds and bats feasting on bugs caught out past curfew. The steady hum of highway and city grid, sounds unhindered in the thin air quickly cooling toward dark.

Last night I was standing out on my patio enjoying some fresh air when I heard a very strange noise off to my left, toward the nearby neighborhood park. Or maybe even the golfcourse/nature area beyond, hard to tell. 

At first I took it to be a group of gleeful partygoers playing coyote, yipping themselves hoarse in a yard somewhere…one of them clowning around, making this strange lowing sound. Like some flaccid impersonation of a wolf.

The yipping intensified and rose to an atavistic clamor beyond the timbre of any human chorus—and I realized with a chill it was a sizable pack of genuine coyotes…and the low animal keening I could no longer hear must be someone’s unfortunate dog having taken itself for an innocent walk into unseen doom in the night.

The yipping quieted and I was grateful to be beyond earshot of the more intimate and grisly sounds I tried not to imagine.

Poor bugger. I hope it was quick as the pack could make it.

After the desert city night returned to its usual steady unsilence, I murmured a word or two for the dog and its owner, hoping there were no kids in the mix—and went back inside to resume my keyboard song, freshly jolted by the experience.

There are strange things done when the desert sun
Sets fast behind the hills;
The dusty trails have their secret tales
That would make your spine run chill;
The western nights shadow eerie frights,
You hope you never see;
And no trace of those whose grim path chose
The wrong place and time to be.

(With a nod to Robert Service)