Howling Mama Coyote
I wandered up to the oil blossom one afternoon recently – through the swampy pasture, still soppy from the flooding. The oil blossom is a strange geological formation for this area of gently rolling prairie land. It’s kind of a grassy mesa, suddenly rising in the pasture, alongside a creek. It was my paternal grandfather who optimistically called it an oil blossom.
It has been an important place for me. A place both of solitude where I’ve sought refuge from time to time, as well as a place for gathering friends, I’ve often experienced surprising and memorable moments there. This afternoon, there would be another.
I was sitting on one of the lichen- and moss-covered, flat sandstones on the western edge of the oil blossom, looking out across the recently flooded pastures, the giant praying-mantis-like oil pumps and yet-to-be-harvest fields of wheat, when Maisy, the dog who had accompanied me, set off down the hill barking. She had spotted a coyote.
The coyote headed north into the pasture, but when it had run out a little way and crossed over a marshy area, it turned toward the oil blossom, set her front legs firmly in a threatening stance and raised her head to the sky and began to howl. This was surprising. Normally, coyotes aren’t seen in the day and when they are, they hurry off into some hiding place. This coyote made herself seen and known. She barked and howled – clearly agitated, clearly protesting our presence and clearly not going to budge.
I looked down the hill on the north side of the oil blossom and realized there is a second rise and that there, on the other side of that rise is probably her den. At night, we had been hearing a burgeoning den, with young yips joining in the more mature barks and yowls. This, I suspected, is at least one source of that most welcome, moonlight serenade.
Maisy had returned to my side and so we watched this coyote for a long time. She never stopped barking and howling.
Realizing the stress we were causing her, I cut short my stay at the oil blossom and Maisy and I walked the opposite direction of the coyote and headed down the other side of the oil blossom, to the south, across the swampy pasture – one more time, feeling deeply grateful to have experienced the natural world.
