Steven Schroeder | around the coyote
The first coyote I ever saw was
nailed to a mesquite fence post at the
Amarillo cut-off, stretched across four
strands of barbed wire three miles from the entrance
to the ranch. It was snowing, and there was
a big hill shaped like a saddle behind
the body, right there where we stopped at a
two lane highway that ran all the way to
the tip of South America if you
turned left and kept going 'til you couldn't
go any further; and I remember thinking
I had never seen such loneliness. They'd
taken a whole slew of those solitary
animals and nailed their hides side by side
on hard posts because they thought they'd
killed some livestock. The pelts weren't
much scrawnier than the animals alive,
and I half think a live one would die of
embarassment if a cow stared it down
with its sad sad eyes big as the moon.
But there they were queued up like Cubs fans
the day tickets go on sale. And they were
still there at the end of Spring when old-timers
couldn't get over how thick the rabbits
were that year. Solitary animals
know one thing leads to another;
that's why they shy away from herds. There's
nothing more dangerous than a herd animal
with a gun, and coyote griots warn against
looking the violent critters in the eyes,
which might just unnerve you with their yellow
glint of intelligent cruelty. Sidle
away before they raise the rifle or
they'll nail you with a crowd of co-conspirators
to a line of old trees along the road in plain sight
like an Empire that lives in fear of a coyote uprising.
from big tex[t] | 2005
