Coyotes running in Gaggles, Flocks and Packs

We woke with a start to our dog, Max, yipping, barking and having a fit at 3am. I thought perhaps someone had wrecked their car in our front yard, which happens regularly in the winter since we live on a curve. After peering out the front balcony and finding all clear, we realized that we heard yipping, yapping and howling answering our dog. We tried to shush Max several times, but she was raising the roof and we feared she would raise our kids as well. Since John always has his binoculars on the windowsill at the ready, he took a gander out the back window and sure enough, on the hill he found a couple coyote howling in the back yard. We had no recourse but to let the dog outside and hope that the group would be chased off by the sound of our Jack Russell since her stature isn't exactly a threat to the German-shepherd size of a wild one. The dog returned a few minutes later, wagging her tail and grinning her doggy smile claiming victory at accomplishing her mission of keeping our little kingdom safe.

This isn't really a strange occurrence in our neck of the woods. We live in the semi-country on five acres of wooded land. The country part is the farm land, spaced out neighbors and woods all around. The "semi" part is that town is four miles down the road so you can be to school, the grocery store or gas station in five minutes. However, the deer, coyote, rabbits, woodchucks and other vermin feel totally at home in our yard and regularly feast on our grass, bushes or landscaping. We generally have herds of deer in the fall who love our apple trees, holes in on the back hill where the gophers, woodchucks, rabbits live and anything else that occasionally wanders through. This includes the two rabid raccoons that have visited our porch in the last 10 years and the bear that John is diligently keeping his sights on (it has come as far as our neighbor's yard).

So come visit us, and while the rest of the world is snoozing to the sound of traffic, crickets in the background or the ocean waves splashing, you can enjoy the chorus of yip-yapping that sounds much more like a litter of puppies playing than a hungry prowler looking for dinner.

PS--John would love to be able to say that the pic above is "one of the ones" but truth be told, it wandered within sight during deer season.