Why Not

While seated at the cozy breakfast table and looking over my steaming coffee cup that was raised for a sip, I glanced out the picture window and couldn't believe my eyes. Coming straight across the  irrigated hay meadow, as if on a mission, an undeterred coyote was making a beeline to the ranch house. Jax and Tari were already outside and soon began barking as I went for my rifle.

The house had been vacant for over a year and was at the end of a long, twisting dirt driveway. The ranch ran 1,000 mother cows over 100,000 mountainous acres and I was living in the middle of pure wilderness. A mother badger had a den full of nearly grown pups popping their heads out of a hole beside the driveway. Pack rats dominated the abandoned and colossal-sized potato cellar that homesteaders dug into the adobe hillside. Elk wandered about, nonchalant about the buildings since there had been no activity for so long. Deer grazed in the yard and raccoons needed evicted from the garage. And, the coyotes were thick.

Long-haired and independent, Tari preferred to sleep outside while prissy Jax relished the comforts of curling up on his puffy bed inside the house. Immediately after moving in, Tari woke me in the middle of the night barking and fighting with something outside. I sprang from bed and flipped on the front porch light while flinging the door open to bust outside. 

It was like a night scene from Africa. Tari stood her ground in the yard, completely surrounded by eerie, glowing eyeballs. After yelling and calling to her, the coyotes skulked aside enough to allow her to come into the house where she grudgingly learned to sleep. Almost nightly, the coyotes woke me with their spooky yipping and yapping on the hillside, challenging Jax and Tari to come outside. Tired of their midnight parties, I would end their war cries by pitching huge firecrackers out the window that boomed and echoed up the valley like waves of thunder.

Live and let live. I try to abide by that motto and simply ask to be left alone.

So, after watching the brazen coyote fearlessly traipse straight to the back of the ranch house, I stepped outside just in time to see him first tangle with Tari. She was tough.  She clashed with the wild intruder while Jax, being her cheerleader, cautiously slipped in for a half-hearted bite. The coyote snapped his attention towards Jax who hauled ass around the house with the coyote in hot pursuit. Tari, built for power and not speed, lagged behind in the race.

Jax completed the lap around the house and saw me, the guardian, standing at the back door. He bolted for refuge at my feet and, remarkably, the coyote kept after him and met an untimely death at point blank range. Tari caught up and began to thrash the dead coyote. Jax, having participated in a few token shakes that turned his white face crimson with blood, came to me wiggling his stub tail.

"Look, dad!  Did you see what I did?" suggested Jax's bodylanguage as he pranced around hoping I had noticed how brave he was and how he had killed the coyote.

Why not, I told myself as I patted his head with gratitude and thanked him for ignoring the "firecracker" while defending his turf.