Coyotes

Don Grose
It's a feeling not unlike that which I remember experiencing in one of my first apartments . I lived at the end of a creaky old hardwood hallway in a beehive of one or two room residences above the main street commercial district in dusty downtown Kingston,
Ontario. There was a dope dealer living across the hall
and down one - he served as our rent collector - and his single bedroom was his blue lit grow-room...the
ritz - this particular apartment building was not - but when I moved in I was in a bind and had to find a place to live - and the TV station and radio station
at which I worked ( CKWS )was a mere block away - and
as much as the apartment was no hell - it was cheap, and the other residents didn't seem to mind me playing
guitar and singing at all hours - and in fact, all the
tenants seemed to mind their own business. Which is
a good thing a good portion of the time...but the
morning I came home from work for lunch to find my
apartment door kicked in and everything I owned
strewn from one end to the other and the stereo -
which I had just finished paying for the previous week-
gone I really missed that sense of community where
you just knew someone had been peeking out from behind
a curtain, or peering through a crack in their door
jam - or watching from a car in their driveway.
That was all a very long time ago - more than 30
years - but I haven't experienced that feeling of
being very small and very much " not in control",
insignificant even in your own world, until the
coyotes came back the other night.
We live on the outskirts of a residential area about
40 kilometres outside of Halifax. It is not unusual to
hear the coyotes active in the distance, howling in the
moonlight a lake or two away - doing what coyotes do -
hunting down food. A couple of months ago while
my son Matthew was home visiting from Fort MacMurray
we had a most unsettling experience. We were standing on the deck at the back of the house when all hell
broke loose in the trees up on the hill, not a hundred
yards from where we stood. There was growling, barking,
snapping - they were making no effort to mask their
prescence so near our house. After the initial instance
of shock, we gave a yell, and sent them into retreat.
Matt , as a kid had stashed several packages of
firecrackers amongst the valuables he'd left behind
when he headed west...I sent him down to bring up a
couple of packs and we fired them off to discourage
the coyotes from coming back. We didn't see them again
until one night last week when at eleven o'clock
I let the dog out - as is our custom - and one
appeared bathed in the street lights, loping it's
way along the shoulder of the road toward us. Ceilidh,
the border collie started barking at something in the
brush that borders our yard..I called her back and
then Charlene ( my wife ) and I watched from an upstairs window as a second coyote emerged from the
brush to join the one I'd spotted streetside. The
days of the wonder dog being let out alone at night
are gone....It's funny - I started feeling the same
way I remembered feeling when I discovered my apartment had been broken into...There is a dark side.
Speaking of dark sides....the hard drive in my digital
recording studio is fried...Thank God Brother Doug
is equipped to repair such things...Going for a visit
next week and figures he can get me back and ship
shape.
Question..am I just getting older and crotchetier or
the "analysts" both on TSN and CBC - and for that matter Sportsnet - increasingly unbearable ? Just what
are the necessary credentials to become a hockey
insider ? Three years active playing in a beer league?
Gotta go...I'll be back
Happy Trials.
Don