I was woken by the coyotes’ singing last night. We don’t hear them very often here in our valley: those we see seem to be passing through.
I wasn’t able to listen for more than the few seconds needed to identify the sound. Dudley joined in with an eerie howl in a much lower pitch. By the time I could get him to be quiet, the coyotes had stopped, and that was probably why he had stopped as well. Dudley doesn’t howl very often. In fact, I don’t know if I had heard him do so before last night.
I’ve been here long enough now that it no longer seems affected to use the local pronunciation, ki-yote, stress on the first syllable, rather than the one I grew up with, ky-ot-i, stress on the second syllable. The pronunciation seemed very odd to me when we first moved here, but now I use it without thinking.
Mostly, and gratefully, we have seen very little of the larger wildlife in this area aside from deer in our ten years here. Neighbors reported bears in our valley a few weeks ago, but I didn’t see any sign of them. Dudley did become rather unglued late one night, barking and whining frantically, and since it was around the time of the bear reports, I decided he had probably smelled them.
A few years ago, after dark, I thought I heard a mountain lion snarl up on a neighboring ridge. Whatever it was, it was large and it was pissed. The horses were quite agitated as well, and I checked them later to make sure everyone was okay. They were dozing, and surprised to see me in the middle of the night.