A coyote in my back yard

I mean — what do you do with that? I’d heard rumors, but then one day, there she was. Peeking around the fence, poking into my yard from the neighbors’ bamboo forest.

Then all of a sudden she was everywhere.

Were there two of them now?

Facebook and Nextdoor were abuzz with sightings. I heard one of them got hit by a car. I read it’s legal to shoot them and that some people make a sport out of it. My thoughts went quickly from: whoa! there’s the coyote to: poor thing.

The hammock in the back yard, strung up between apple and cherry trees, lost some of its relaxing qualities when I could swear I felt wild canine eyes surveying my fragile form.

I was conflicted. I didn’t want anything to happen to the coyote but man – I kind of did not love the idea of my little kids getting eaten, either.

What was it eating all this time? Raccoons?

It’s hard to know when something is gone. You have to keep track of the last time you saw or heard something and you can never really ever know until you see evidence.

Someone said they saw some fresh poop.

And then nothing.

I still can’t fall asleep on the hammock, but that’s a small price to pay to share our space with real, wild nature.