Last night, the three coyotes slept in the coyote den I made. I needed to make the den bigger. I dug a hole in the cedar. Cleaned out the hibiscus. I wore gloves. I did not know about the puppy. They protect the puppy with their coyote lives and they hide him if they can. I will never have people up here. Patriarch coyote is constantly looking up for hawks. His baby had probably been born in the spring. It was a secret. I have seen crows pick up praire dogs. This is high autumn, and coyotes do what all do who have a smidgen of sense in there. They sleep entanged together. They do not sleep for long because night is for the bats and dogs. There is a sullenness to those yellow predators’ eyes. They kinda look like little (but not that little) wolves. And sad. I could be wrong, too. Utterly wrong. They could be red wolves who are not always red. I really do not care. I care a lot about rodents in my cabin. I am serious about cleaning because dust from mice droppings are loaded with airborn virus.

I have no idea how mice get inside a log cabin. Meet my Jack, Mr. Mouse. The mice are dangerous. They carry disease. Go poop somewhere else. Plain old soap and water helps. Snakes eat them, too. 

The coyotes have every right to be here. If they are wolves, I understand how to make a bigger cedar cave. Red wolves are little guys. They were supposed to have disappeared. Some at-risk ones are good for the earth. They die by trees and provide fertilzer on the ground. The cedar stays green and can bring it down a degree of two. If it’s a bad winter, the animals freeze and starve to death if there’s no fat on their bones. Field mice might not be enough. Starvation is a terrible way to die. If we don’t save what we have, we will lose it. We lose them every single day to lack of habitat. They starve and we hunt them. A wolf cannot eat a cob of dried corn. They’re carnivores. They hunt. I have seen 30 coyotes run herd through a camp site. The coyotes are nimble like the Northern Lights. Wolves are apples and oranges. They are fearless and they are fast. They are stunning and as they passed all around me, compelled to stay together, they were artful.

And ran like a river through my dreams.

I was going to put some only rugs in the den. Biologists are laughing at me as I write this. I will hear about it. Go ahead. You be cold. You sleep in a cedar den. Do not look Canis latrans in the eye. Their eyes are yellow like a tigers. They do not like the smell of humans. Homo sapiens have been killing them since day one, Spacetime. The evolution of fear. These are smart animals. I have not seen a single mouse since the coyotes arrived. I think they might be having a baby in the spring. If the winter is a bad one, I will water and feed them in the den. I am sure such a thing as an interspecies kindness is strictly off limits. You cannot do it. Fuck’em. I am not going to tolerate a new pup starving to death because the snow is too damn tall. If we’re not snowed in, I will stop feeding them. Or I will stop feeding them just a little. Maybe I won’t stop feeding them. You have never heard a three in the morning howling at what I do not know. Their ears huge. I did a bad thinf. Again. I played with the pup while Mom and Dad went on a mouse hunt. Shoot me. I am loving the aloneness. I do not have to deal with people who have a hard time understanding what I say. Very little. Or all the eyes land on you.