Taos Day 15 — Coyotes

Two coyotes caught my eye as they dashed by my window this morning -- sleek and brown and powerful, and most of all deadly quick.  They did not walk the way dogs walk, at an amble. They weren't out to smell the roses but to catch the rabbits.

Western Coyote -- stock photo

They circled the house not once but several times, maybe looking for the chickens, and then disappeared up a hill and into a pine forest as quickly as they came.

I had been wakened two nights before sleeping in my bus by a chorus of howls and yips, seemingly in all directions. I sat up and listened. And as I listened I saw it -- a bright last-quarter-moon rising over a mountain and transforming the world below to a playground of ghostly shapes and dim shadows where moments before there had been darkness.

I listened some more but  the coyotes were still. Perhaps wakened to the moonlight hunt they were now going about it with silent speed and deadly purpose.   JNR