Sorry this one is out of order. I noticed after posting the last one that my point total was off by 1/2 point, so I went back and tried to find the other story I was missing. It took me about an hour, but I finally found it, tucked away in one of my school files for some reason. Anyway, here it is.
This one will be brief, I promise. So I got home this evening from a walk with Cameron. Because we’re both not terribly motivated people, we’ve found it helps when we walk together. At least that way we can jaw on about pointless things like television shows and the students we’re teaching (yes, I called them pointless, prove otherwise), which makes the time go by more quickly.
I was walking up my driveway when I saw what I thought was a dog across the yard, near our creek (which, really, is a drainage creek that spends most of its time stagnating since it takes a good two inches of rain to get its water moving). The dog was standing there, looking innocent enough, so I paid it little attention and went into the house. We have about four neighbor dogs that get out and routinely wander through our yard, looking for tasty bunnies and squirrels, of which we have an abundance, to devour. Mostly they keep to themselves, so we leave them be, though there is an annoying beagle that comes into our yard and starts baying like Jesus Christ himself has returned to earth with the world’s largest dog whistle and two score of shock collars (which, if I’m remembering my catechism correctly, is exactly how he’s meant to return). This dog I would probably strangle if I ever had the chance, but he only comes in the middle of the night when we’re sound asleep and the rabid howling of a small dog can do the most psychological damage to us, and by the time we’re up and in the yard, he’s long gone since his job for the night is already done.
Figuring it was one of these dogs, I didn’t even bother to investigate further. Once inside, I found Libby in the office working on the computer and we started talking about something, probably how our days were or something else equally engaging since I don’t even remember the topic.
Then, quite out of nowhere, we heard a loud BANG.
“Um,” I managed.
“What the hell was that?” Libby asked. She was, of course, not wearing a shirt or bra because I demand that she is always topless when she’s home (for obvious health reasons). She got up and went into the bathroom to put a shirt on and I grabbed my freshly removed shoes and started lacing them back up.
We went outside to find two police cars pulled up to the side of the road by our yard. Outside the cars were two police officers, one of them holding some sort of assault rifle. And I’m not exaggerating here. It was an assault rifle of some sort. Granted, I don’t know enough about assault rifles to identify exact models on sight, but I know a regular rifle and a shotgun when I see them, and I have watched enough history channel and played enough video games to know that assault rifles, on the whole, do not look like either of these. Why on earth they NEEDED an assault rifle to shoot whatever it was that they shot was quite beyond me. Probably, they HAD the assault rifles somewhere back at base and were just waiting with baited breath for the day when they would get a call that would allow them to use them. And this, apparently, was one of those calls.
I surveyed the area and saw, in the exact spot where I’d seen the “dog” from earlier, a smallish heap of death curled up. It hadn’t been a dog at all, it had been a coyote.
Our neighbor Shelly came into our yard and said, “I saw him standing there earlier and he wasn’t moving at all. He looked like he was sick or something so I called the police.”
Very astute, I’m sure. Granted, it was a wild animal in our yard and I should have been more worried about it pouncing on one of us unawares and tearing out our jugulars, but I had grown up around coyotes and they really didn’t intimidate me very much. Sure they ate a few dozen of our cats in my lifetime, and we could always hear them off in the distance sounding like they wanted to rumble, but they invariably kept their distance and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a case of a person who didn’t deserve it being attacked by one. If it had been sick, obviously that might have changed things, but, since the only evidence against it was that it was “standing there” not moving, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about someone coming onto my lawn and killing the wildlife, especially when it’s probably just an excuse to use a big gun.
Anyway, about then Libby came out and said, “What’s going on?”
“Go inside and take your shirt back off,” I said, flexing my pectorals. “This is man business.” I flexed again for good measure.
To which she punched me in the gonads.
“Urgh,” I replied casually as I crumpled to the ground. “Coyote,” I then added, motioning to the heap on the ground with my head, since both of my hands were busy clasping my roughed up jumblies.
And then one of the officers picked the dead coyote up by the tail and dropped it into a trash bag. He tied the bag off, went over to his car, popped the trunk and dropped the bag inside. End of story. Both officers got back into their cars and they drove off. Never once did either of them say a word to any of us.
After that, we stood in our yard—Libby stood, I remained curled up on the ground—and talked with the neighbors for a few minutes. Kurt and Shelly, though we’ve lived by them for five years now, are still relative strangers to us. We’ve shared a few casual conversations and we wave to one another when we meet on the street, but that’s about it. This time we talked about a number of things—I’m unclear on most of the conversation because of the throbbing pain in my groinal area—but eventually it came to pass that they offered to give us an old soft-tub hot tub of theirs. It had been unused for two or three years but, apparently. it still worked. This sounded like great news for my aching junk especially.
And so, I’ve decided to award myself ½ point for the night’s adventure. Granted, I didn’t have anything DIRECTLY to do with the destruction of Nature, but it did happen on my property and I did receive a free hot tub out of the deal. If that doesn’t earn me a half a point, then I don’t know what will.
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