It was a digging sound. A scurrying of front paws. An artillery of furious trench work and determination among crispy leaves.
As the sun stretched upwards in the sky, we eventually saw a coyote working in our hillside to unearth something very important. His head would dart up and down, checking to see if he was being watched, his body quite tense and excited. Even after he spotted us, he didn't stop. He was saying, I don't know about you, Prospector, but this here is MY gold. Ya hear? Don't care if ya watch, but bugger if I'm gon' be sharin' nothin' when I'm done.
One of the downsides of living in the canyon is that we can't have pets. Too many wild critters lick their chops hoping for a morsel of spoiled domesticity to wander outside. But the beauty of our location is that we get to have encounters like the one this morning - encounters that remind us we're in their world. Not the other way around.
