Coyote

Laurainnj, who writes the fascinating blog, Somewhere in NJ, recently posted the story of the coyote down there that tried to carry a toddler off, right out of the family back yard. Many people had very interesting comments on her post and I got to thinking about our experiences with the little brush wolves here at Northview.

About thirty years ago, though I had lived most of my life hiking the mountains and working outdoors, I had never seen or heard one. They just weren't out there. Then on a trip to the Boonville area (not so very far from Canada) we heard a pack howling as we slept in our camper one night. It was a wonderfully eerie, hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck experience.

Soon we were hearing them here, some distance farther south and east. They didn't bother much of anything and were an interesting reminder of wilder places. We still didn't see them, but we knew they were out there.

Then at age 26 I took up milking cows. Soon I married my farmer and coyotes took on a whole 'nother aspect. First they contented themselves with taking our cats. They just LOVE cats! From a high of around forty clustered around the free milk dish (thanks to all the folks who do drive-by drop-offs) we now have seven. Any that don't stay in the buildings are lunch. Next they began to prey on weakened animals like twin calves born outdoors at night. The mother cow can protect one quite successfully, but two are hard to cover. Then they killed a cow that fell down an embankment and couldn't stand. We couldn't get her on her feet, but she looked like she was going to recover, so we were carrying food and water to her with the truck. One morning her hide was almost entirely ripped off, her throat was torn out and, of course, she was dead. So to those who wonder if they can take deer, the answer is a resounding yes, even though they are quite content with rats and rabbits when they can get them.


Later a pair of them drove the visiting nurse off the back porch when she stopped to care for my late mother-in-law who was receiving hospice care. The nursing service called us in high dudgeon to come get our dogs off the porch so the nurse could get in. No dogs though, just a pair of coyotes that were bolder than they needed to be.

I suspect the one that attacked the child was rabid, like the fisher that attacked a woman in her garage near here, or didn't realize that the child was a person. I have no fear of them bothering me personally, even though I have encountered them many times when walking in the fields. They are bolder than foxes, which bolt willy nilly, but not aggressive-seeming. They offer us dirt farmers a boon in that they kill woodchucks, which otherwise build great mounds of dirt around the holes they dig in hayfields. There is something about a hidden pile of dirt and stones that is rough on farm machinery! We don't miss the chucks as they just adapted to the predators and moved down to the house, where they dig holes under all the buildings.


However, to all the folks who claim that we are encroaching on coyote habitat and thus should be happy to have problems with them, sorry, this time we were here first. Unquestionably people drove wolves out of the northeast and opened a niche for the little wild dogs, but coyotes didn't show up here in upstate New York until LONG after I was born. The cities they are moving into were there many decades before they arrived to sort through the garbage and grab small dogs. I am sure they are here to stay though, so we get calves in off the hill as fast as we can, and are thankful for cows like Zinnia, who would protect a baby from a whole pack of real wolves if she had to.

The things you see

Seen on the street in Fultonville

Seen creeping up out in the main garden

Seen from the big windows just before the sun went down

....on a fine (finally) spring day.

Muskrat houses

Over on Route Twenty near Sharon Springs. They dwarf the tiny pond they occupy. Must be quite a sight when as many rats as it took to build 'em start swimming around and cutting cattails. The pond must churn like somebody was stirring it with a souped up Evinrude!

Movin' On

*Grackle trying to use the tube feeder*

I came back over to the house today, half-way through milking, to get another cup of the beverage described below. Usually I take that all important second cup with me when I go out to milk, having consumed the first here at the computer, while waiting for the rest of the household to rise and shine (or rise and glower, as the case may be.) However, last night we got a mess of fresh snow on top of partly frozen tractor ruts and mud and walking was tricky.

Anyhow, while I waited the 2.25 minutes that I nuke the water for my all-important Tasters Choice, I looked out the window over the kitchen sink at the heifer pasture hill. You never know what you might see out there, from turkeys, deer and squirrels to those big black half dog/half coyote things that got the neighbor's pony. Today there were blackbirds flying past, a little above treetop level, just about over the north side fence. The flock undulated, wave-like, as they went, maybe seventy or eighty birds in sight at any one time.

They flew...and flew..and flew...the whole time the water heated, all the time it took me to put in the coffee, sugar, and milk. All the time it took me to tug on two pairs of gloves, slip outside and get all the way to the cow barnyard without spilling any. It had to be at least five minutes worth of grackle, red-winged black bird and probably some brown-headed cow birds. At the same time starlings shuttled back and forth, blue jays flashed by and a few geese sounded their distant hound dog cries. I'll bet there were a thousand stretched birds across the roughly half a mile that makes up our road frontage.

There may be snow on the ground and ice on the river, but the ones who arrive first gets the prettiest mates and the fanciest nesting sites. The birds aren't waiting for the weather; they are migrating and they are doing it NOW.

Frosty morning

*Taken 3/2

Ironic indeed

I'm sorry, but this just makes me shake my head in wonder...

"A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite."


Am I missing something here?

"Then there was the cold - quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said."

A kind of different

Line of clouds

I don't mind

It is a closely held secret how I feel about driving Becky over to the college for her Friday classes. Liz takes her other days, but has nothing scheduled on Friday so it is my turn. The other day the bookstore lady from whom Becky buys me a coffee for the drive home mentioned to Liz that she felt sorry for me having to sit in the car all that time.



Let's see, how can I handle such punishment week after week? It was so still this morning early that you could hear the leaves falling. They made a sibilant rustle like the pattering of a crisp rain at the beginning of a summer storm. The air was crystal clear after last night brought us the first real killing frost. Oh, we have had a few little ones that polished off the tomatoes and cannas, but last night it hit the mid twenties. Driving down the valley it was so clear that a church steeple appeared to be suspended in space like a knife on a string. You could spot pigeons soaring miles away in the pristine sky.



Oak trees unfurled a sprawling magic carpet of gold and red and chestnut across the mountains. Stark shadows sharply outlined those mountains in the brilliant slanting sunlight. The view was so beautiful coming down into the Schoharie Valley that it almost hurt to look at it.

Once I parked a scattering of crows dive-bombed the parking lot. Amusing to watch one alight on a slender, brittle twig and try to balance, flicking its wings and teetering awkwardly. One flew so close to the open car window that I heard the rustle of its feathers like a whisper of silk right next to my ear.


Canada Geese, flock after flock of them, crisscrossed the sky, flying low and fast. Or they wheeled, calling plaintively, over some body of water out of sight below the campus. I sat in the car, warm sun at my shoulder, a good book in my lap and no more work to do than to leap out of the car occasionally to snap another picture of the unfolding morning beauty. Poor me.