Y’know how the people of Obann, in my books, are confused by all the strange animals drifting into their country? Well, I’m beginning to appreciate just how they feel.
This week in my home town in New Jersey, police say it was probably coyotes that killed two deer by Metuchen High School (https://patch.com/new-jersey/edison-metuchen/coyotes-attacked-killed-deer-metuchen-officials-say).
Coyotes? We don’t have coyotes! Like, they’re out West with all those giant cactuses–
Nope. Last year there were two coyote attacks in New Jersey.
But this is crazy. All my life, if you wanted to see a coyote out here in Joisey, you had to go to the zoo.
Same with the Canada geese. If you wanted to see one of them, when I was a boy, you had to go to the annual Sportsmen’s Show. But now they’re all over the place.
And we are told jaguars are wandering into a couple of our Southwestern states. Jaguars!
How far are we from seeing mammoths and sabertoothed tigers?
Hey, now, you can’t blame me for this! Just because I started doing this in books, ten years ago: bringing back animals that aren’t supposed to be here anymore. “Here” being a country in a fantasy! I mean, this is soooo not my fault!
Now they’re telling us to keep our pets indoors. Not because they might get squashed by a careless driver, which happens every day around here, but because they might get eaten by coyotes.
Go figure.
It’s amazing, to say the least. I will state categorically that allowing cats to roam free is risky in most places. Where I live it’s almost assured that a coyote will get them, and with few trees the cats natural refuge is not always close enough.
Id say more, but I gotta go. A couple of coyotes just treed a mountain lion in my front yard and El Jefe, the Jaguar, just treed the coyotes. That wouldn’t be so bad in itself but that weird bird just came back, the one with an elongated triangular head and teeth.
Ok, I might be exaggerating a bit about the pterodactyl, but the other three have been spotted in the area, the coyotes to the point of disgust. I wonder if, perhaps, our God is increasing the fecundity of some of these species. Jaguars love to eat large ungulates and the deer population around here is so high as to be problematic. If ol’ El Jefe decided to take shade under the big tree in my back yard he’d have plenty to eat. 🙂 I doubt that I’ll be getting any visits from the areas most famous feline, but it’s still fun to look out at the mountains just a few miles away and know that a wild Jaguar is somewhere within my purview. If he eats a few coyotes along the way, I’ll cheer.
We’ve got coyotes here too. The area we live in still has quite a bit of ‘wild’ even in the ‘nice suburban neighborhoods’. People’s pets have been attacked in their own yards, to the point where they’re afraid to let their small children play on the swing sets in their yards for fear of these critters. Habitats are disappearing. Even bears are moving in ever closer.
My normally benign attitude towards wildlife does not extend to coyotes. Physically, they are a medium sized dog, but they are not to be trusted in any way. They are truly nasty creatures.
Crazy…here in Southern California there are Coyotes too and saw one while heading to church Sunday morning