Wild Things

Maybe it's because we live so close to the Everglades. Maybe it's because we have Nature preserves all over the state of Florida, and civilization is encroaching upon them. For whatever reason, we are having more close encounters with wild things.

One day last year, I sat in the car while my husband went into a printery to run an errand. Within five minutes, I saw what I at first thought was a German shepherd crossing the road not 500 feet away. Before he disappeared into the woods, however, I realized his legs were too long and his body, too skinny, to belong to a dog. No doubt about it, I had seen a coyote.

I didn't hear about more sightings until a few weeks ago when our island's newspaper reported that a coyote was found dead alongside the road between us and Ft. Myers, victim of a hit and run.

This morning, as we were taking our morning walk, a man whom we regularly see along the way told us there is a coyote and two pups in a nearby woods and that if we listened, we could hear them. We didn't want to get too close or dawdle, as we had our dog along, but we did make out the yippy sounds of what could have been baby beasties. Ed thought the sound might have been caused by trees rubbing together, but I wasn't so sure. (This bears looking into at a later date.)

Then, on the TV news this evening, there was home video of a coyote running up the side of a busy street on the mainland, car and camera in pursuit. The police advised residents in the area to keep cats and small dogs inside. There is no plan, so far as I know, to catch and relocate.