Hiking the hills on the outskirts of Nevada City, catching up with good friends Lulu and Randall while absorbing the beauty of the fall forests, we exchanged tall dog tales along the way. The tallest was not quite about a dog, but close enough.
The folks up there are all abuzz these days about the journey of a brother and sister from Colorado who recently transplanted themselves to the local artist community after a very eventful road trip from Boulder, Colorado. It seems that somewhere near the Utah/Nevada state line, one of a pack of coyotes running beside the car swerved in front of it. The car slammed into the beastie at full speed and the travelers figured it was an instant goner, so with a ding in their bumper and a pang in their hearts, they continued to drive.
Several hours later they stopped the car in North San Juan, California to inspect the damage and were chagrined to find coyote fur still stuck in the grill of their Honda. Now this is where the story gets strange indeed: When the brother touched the fur it flinched – as did he, needless to say. Attached to the fur was an entire, intact, living, breathing coyote wedged behind the grill of the car!
A local mechanic removed the front of the vehicle and animal control officers captured the coyote. Miraculously, it had only a couple of scrapes on its paws, so it was taken to an animal rescue facility to rest up for a few days before being transported back to the wilds of Utah.
But that’s not the end of the story. This must have been some kind of ninja coyote, because somehow it managed to escape the cage and the facility — never to be seen again. Talk about wily.Maybe it knew California is more tolerant of coyote-type behavior than the land of Brigham Young and decided that – as a wise, grey Wolfe once wrote – you can never go home again.
Native Americans have many legends about coyotes. One tells that the coyote made many tribes of Indians from the body parts of a monster it had slain, another that it stole fire from the immortals so man could be warmed and cook his meat.
And now perhaps there is a new legend, about how coyote discovered a nifty rumble seat for scruffy desert hitchers complete with a radiator heating unit. And while doing so, he turned a brother and sister who unwittingly smuggled him across two borders into “coyotes” in their own right. No wonder they named the animal Tricky.
It’s a tradition of our culture to butcher a turkey or two for the holidays, and it’s a tradition of this column to butcher a poor, innocent Christmas Carol that’s done no harm to anyone. Here’s my latest victim (with apologies to Rudolph and Gene Autry). Have a jolly, holly, Collie Christmas!
Ralph the Allergic Bloodhound
Ralph the allergic bloodhound had a very stuffy nose
He couldn’t track Limburger with a smeller that just blows
All of the other bloodhounds hunted down the feast themselves
Ralph couldn’t join the action with all those happy, howling “elves”
Then one night some skunks attacked, left those hounds distraught
Ralph’s nose was invulnerable, showed those polecats what he’s got
Then all the hound dogs cheered him, yelped, “You have become a star!
And we will always love you – but only if it’s from afar!”
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