Animals

Wild and domestic

This is the second post in a three-post series. Here’s the first:

As Molly the Aussie wandered, but not too far, into A Good Spot, H listed the wild animals in the area he had direct knowledge of: coyotes, deer, and bear were to be expected but the sightings of moose, mountain lions, and wolves (or their prints and/or scat) were a surprise to me. I don’t know why, because I should have expected them, but I guess hearing that they are leaving their leavings within yards of my ersatz driveway made them corporeal beings. I decided to try to make them even more corporeal by strapping a trail cam to a tree, aiming it carefully down the logging trail, before we left. Can you imagine what that camera is going to capture? To see the wild animals is reason enough to go back in a couple weeks! (Disclaimer: I bought a cheap one because I’m not 100% sure it won’t “walk away,” so there’s are no guarantees how good the pictures will be nor even that there will be pictures.)

Fast-forward five days, when I’m back home and walking Uša one early morning. On a whim, I decide to walk the Path of Four Bridges, a trail through a county wetland area.

A YouTube video of Ande walking it in 2024 & a YouTube video of Uša walking it in 2026

I used to walk Ande down the path often and I’ve taken Uša only a couple of times. [Above you can see a videos of Ande and Uša walking the same stretch of the Path two years apart. (The links take you to YouTube, if you want to follow me there.)]

It takes about 15 minutes to walk this trail and on this particular glorious morning I was hoping for a relaxing stroll. Uša is incredibly clingy when I let him off-leash; my theory is that when when he’s on-leash, he can “pull” and thus feel where I am, but when he’s off-leash, he has to turn around to know where I am. Plus he’s just incredibly clingy.

Early on the path, I noticed that the burdochs are taking over and crowding the trail in places and ways I’ve never seen before. It seems like no one is really going on this trail much, much less maintaining it. That was Clue #1.

Clue #2 came about halfway through the path, around the second bridge, when I noticed some droppings that looked like dog droppings but had berries in them and I thought to myself, I actually thought to myself, “That looks like a wild animal’s droppings.” And I kept going forward.

After we crossed the third bridge, over a creek, and we were starting to enter the truly wetlands portion of the path, where the path meanders through grasses that grow tall and are usually wet, and were wet this morning, and where I started to think about turning around, I hear Clue #3: a dog barking from a line of trees along that creek. And I decide to talk to the barking dog. I say ridiculous things like, “Are you okay? Where are you? Do you want to come?” And thinking this is a stray dog, possibly injured, I start ponder-planning how I can take Uša home and then come back to help this dog. To go forward through the tall, wet grasses would be the fastest way off the path and to a street, but it’s obviously going to get too messy up ahead. We have to turn around.

Just as we get back to the bridge, the bridge across that creek, a loud rustle from the bushes to the left grabs my attention. Earlier on that same walk, Uša and I had watched a deer gracefully bound across a different trail in front of us. I was expecting a deer.

This was no deer. Uša starts toward the sound. I yell for him to come back and he listens, just in time for me to see the coyote. Have you ever seen a coyote arch its back and open its mouth to appear big and scary? It works. It looks bigger and scarier than it is.

Of course it had been a coyote barking at us, and leaving wild animal droppings that almost look like dog poo, and probably the reason no one is walking or maintaining this path anymore. I imagine he has a little den there in the tree line and was barking to protect it.

The only option is to leave the situation quickly and try not to look like prey. We first have to go across a small clearing. I look back and it is following us. I yell again. It arches its back and opens its mouth again. Uša stays in front of me and would clearly like us to be moving faster but will not leave me. That’s a good thing. I get my Swiss army knife out, wishing that was not the only weapon I had, and contemplate how to repurpose the leash with its metal clasp.

We keep walking. Briskly.

We get to the next bridge, after which it’s just woods. The coyote is still following. I’m still telling it firmly to go back. It is still arching its back and opening its mouth when I do. We’re following the path and I’m wondering if the coyote knows an alternate route through the woods and is going to try to cut us off. I’m actually relieved to see it still following us on the same path. It doesn’t seem to intend to ambush Uša from the side or from ahead.

Halfway through the woods I don’t see it behind us anymore, and because there are ponds and a lot of water to the right of us, I am confident it won’t be coming through there. I look to the left, which is sparser woods up an embankment and while I doubt that the coyote is named Wile E. Coyote, (Super) Genius, it could possibly cut up there to move faster than we.

But the coyote didn’t do that. It probably turned around and went back to its den. It wasn’t hunting, it was escorting us away. At least that’s the sense my mind makes of the situation as we get back to a wide, paved trail and I re-leash Uša, who likewise seems to have decided that we’re no longer being pursued.

I know it might sound like I’m making this up, but when the coyote first arched its back and opened its mouth, when it surprised us the first time, is the only moment I felt any fear; the rest of the adventure with the coyote took ten minutes, but I was never afraid, just highly attentive to what was happening and thinking how to be ready to defend us. Even as I walked through the woods, I felt oddly grateful for the chance to learn this lesson: read clues as signs for what they are indicating, not what you hope them to be. And listen to yourself (I had, after all, identified the droppings correctly).

It’s rare to have an encounter with a wild animal like that. I had made mistakes, but I preserved and even utilized my respect for the wild animal, and I am still looking forward to seeing what the trail cam captures on A Good Spot!

But before I go back to A Good Spot for the SD card in the trail cam, I have a few projects to plan and start, which I will discuss in the next post.

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