This afternoon, I went walking.  About a 1/2 mile from our apartment is a giant prairie dog field.  I’ve blogged about it before, right after we moved here.

So today as I was walking along the prairie dog village, I noticed that the prairie dogs were in a frenzy.  I didn’t think it was me.  They’d always just pretty much ignored me as I went by.

I went a little farther to where I was supposed to wind down the hill.  I glanced up and about 40 yards away from me was a coyote.   He was a good sized coyote.  I think he was Timber’s size so he probably weighed at least 50 pounds.

He looked at me.  I looked at him.  He looked at me.  I looked at him.  At this point, I remembered that I was supposed to appear big and boisterous and loud.  Instead I felt very timid and small.  I took a couple of steps back.  He took a couple of steps forward, but not like he was coming after me.  I think he was just waiting to see what I was going to do.

I wanted to run and hightail it out of there screaming at the top of my lungs.  (I’m remembering now that I blogged previously how I thought this might be my likely reaction to seeing a coyote.)

So I started sidestepping my way away from him.  He looked at me a little more, as he stood amidst the chattering prairie dogs (they were in the highest stage of alert – Defcon 1 for prairie dogs), although in his immediate vicinity, there were none peeking up from their holes.   All of a sudden he took off bounding down the hill.  Now that was a sight to see.  He really looked longbodied then and he just flew down the hill.  I don’t know what made him run, but I was glad to see him moving away from me, while at the same time, it was so pretty to see him bounding down the hill.

I am a little surprised that I’d not seen a coyote in the field there before.  I mean it has to just be a smorgasbord there.  Prairie dog dinner city.   Those little guys are pretty quick though.  It reminds me of the gopher smashing game we used to play at Chuck E Cheese.  They can disappear pretty fast.  Their communication system was pretty amazing to witness as well.

When I got home, I told David and Davey about it.  Davey got very excited and immediately wanted to go back to the prairie dog village to find the coyote.  “Let’s go Mommy!  Let’s go see the prairie dogs!  Let’s go see the coyote!”