I'd been thinking of coyotes for months now, knowing people had been seeing them. The crows were going nuts all morning, they've been flocking to the area for a few weeks recently, so I just figured they were moving in as a new hangout. When they'd first starting to arrive at lunch and making a ruckus, I'd thought there might be an owl or eagle or something, but though they at first seemed agitated, I couldn't find any other source for it, and figured they were just doing lunch (some picking seed pods on trees, some tearing at moss.) And then walking to lunch yesterday, I happened to look down at a grassy patch and there was a figure there, lolling in the grass. A big dog. A coyote. I stopped and watched it, tried to take a picture with my phone. And I turned my head, and there was another one, standing in the shadows under a tree, watching.
The only one I'd seen before had been scrawny, small, these two were on the larger end of coyote size. My co-worker had seen one a few months ago and thought it was a wolf (we don't have wolves here, I don't think.)
They were still there on my way back, more in the trees. I stopped to look, and one looked back, and I thought, "Yeah, still a wild animal," though well-fed and healthy looking, also relatively calm and unconcerned with all the people and traffic nearby. (Might be why I rarely see my rabbits anymore.) And walked on. And they've been here all along.
