A Pet Coyote

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Definition:  Bard… In medieval Gaelic and British culture, a bard was a professional story teller, verse-maker and music composer.  A bard was a specific, lower class of poet, contrasting with a higher rank.  With the decline of bardic tradition in modern times the term "bard" acquired generic meanings of an author or minstrel especially a famous one.

***

  I used to jog.

  Every morning I’d drag my ass out of bed and go for a jog, have a shower then be off to work.

  Over the years I stopped jogging and switched to just going for long walks or a bicycle ride.

  When you’re out that early in the morning you get to see things you don’t usually get to see by riding around in a car.

  There was that time I was jogging near the Mexican border south of Bisbee, Arizona when I encountered a mama javelina and her two babies.  I REALLY ran that morning…away from the javelina.

  When I lived in Roswell in the Pecos Valley of southeastern New Mexico I was out jogging when I heard something in the dark.  I reached for my flashlight and found that the sound was that of a skunk stomping its little feet.  When my flashlight beam found the skunk it had its rear feet in the air…it was ready to spray.  I didn’t think twice, I whirled around and headed the other way.

  There was that time I was jogging on the north side of Roswell and I heard a noise that made me think there was someone behind me.

  I stopped and turned around.  There, standing under a streetlight was a full-grown coyote.

  I looked at the coyote, the coyote looked at me.

  I hunkered over and went, “GRRRRRRRRRRR.”

  I always wanted to do that.

  The coyote held his position but raised his head and continued to stare at me.

  Then he calmly walked away in the other direction.

  When I got to work at the country radio station that morning I told the tale of the coyote encounter.

  The phones lit up.

  It’s right here I’ll explain something if you don’t already know it:  In The Golden West the coyote is one of those critters that can spark a lively discussion.  Other “hot topic” critters are prairie dogs and rattlesnakes.  Ranchers see coyotes as a threat to cattle, particularly calves.  Prairie dogs dig and make holes that can cause a cow to break a leg and a rattlesnake’s bite can be deadly.  I encounter these animals I give them a pass.  Others encounter these animals they’ll do what they will:  Not my journey…not my Karma.

  When it comes to coyotes, a lot of ranchers like to shoot them on sight, communities have been known to have coyote shooting contests, dead coyotes are hanged on barbed wire fences as a “warning” to other coyotes…an interesting concept but I don’t believe coyotes give a damn that some of their relatives are hanging dead on a fence.

  Anyway, after I told the story of the coyote encounter I got callers.

  “Where’d you see that coyote?” asked the first caller.  “I wanna go over there and see if I can see it AND SHOOT IT.”

  “Don’t you carry a pistol with you when you jog?” asked another.  “Damn, too bad, I’d a-shot it.”

  Then there was the flip side of the discussion…

  “Why’d you talk about that coyote,” said a woman on the other end of the line, “Now some yay-hoos are probably gonna drive out there and try to find it to shoot it.

  When our newsman came on in to do his newscast the discussion took a completely different turn.

  “I had a pet coyote named ‘Bitch’ when I was a boy,” he said.

  This was a guy who would go on to become a very good friend to me, a man I would go on to call “The Bard of the Pecos” because he had many stories to tell of southeast New Mexico.

  The Bard grew up in a small town in Roosevelt County, New Mexico.  He told tales of life in the dryland farming and cattle country, like how his family kept rabbits in a big pen, nothing more than a hunk of their yard surrounded by fence with some strands of wire over the top to keep hawks from dropping out of the sky for some free eats.

  So anyway, whenever it was time for some rabbit on the table, The Bard’s daddy would go out to the yard with his .22 rifle and pop a rabbit, one of many, out in the pen.  “After all,” said The Bard, “You don’t want to get too familiar with somethin’ you’re gonna eat.”

  When The Bard was just a boy his daddy died.  “Dropped dead of a heart attack playin’ softball at a church picnic.  I was six,” he said.

  The Bard would go on to finish high school, shoot himself in “the dangly bits” by accident while camping with friends, join the military, come home, patronize the cathouses of eastern New Mexico a couple of times, go to college at the regional university then go on to be a newsman.

  And I was about to learn of the pet coyote he once had.

  “Raised her from a pup,” said The Bard.  “I think she was the runt of the litter.  Found her while I was out walking the range one day.”

  “She was just like a dog,” said The Bard.  “Came when I called, played ball, stuff like that.  But I had to keep her penned up at night or when I was in the house or away.  She didn’t like that.  She’d pace back and forth in that pen all the time.”

  “So one night, I don’t know how, she got out and killed my momma’s chickens,” said The Bard.  “My momma told me I had to get rid of her.  If I didn’t she’d shoot her and wouldn’t mind doing it.”

  “You know my momma worked at the little café in town and that day she was bending the ear of everyone who’d listen about her boy’s pet coyote who just killed all her chickens.  One of the customers that day was a coyote trapper and he said he’d take Bitch.  He said he’d keep her and use her urine to trap coyotes,” said The Bard.  “I hadn’t been home from school long when he showed up with a cage and took her away.  I cried and cried, but I knew my momma was right.”

  I could see it all as The Bard told his tale.

  We sat quiet for a minute or two while a country song spun on the turntable.

  Then The Bard stood up and left the radio studio.

E P I L O G U E

  

  Twenty-five years after he told me that story The Bard of The Pecos caught The Cancer and “went on to Glory.” 

  When I think of my old pal I think of many things, one of which is a line from the Tom T. Hall song “The Year Clayton Delaney Died”:  “I often wondered why Clayton, who sounded so good to me, never took his guitar and made it down in Tennessee.”

  I often wondered why The Bard never put together all of his stories of growing up in The Golden West in the cattle and dryland farming lands of eastern New Mexico.  That would’ve made a good book or a few.  Maybe it had something to do with why he wouldn’t go to work for newspapers:  “They won’t pay me what I’m worth.”

  The Bard was a damn fine writer, a damn fine storyteller, an aficionado of good cooking, dancing with to a good Willie Nelson or real country song and a guy who was like a brother to me.

  And I miss him.

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