It was all on just an any day Sunday night…

By sheer virtue of geography, my husband and I and our two sons were born in the city.  I never considered myself a “city girl” and we forever longed to live a simpler, more rural and independent life.  Eventually, we followed the call of our hearts, bought land, built our home and moved to our little dirt road to grow our family farm.

We now live in rural Georgia.

It’s rural.

We don’t have next door neighbors any longer.  We have dairy cows and wildlife for neighbors.

Among other wildlife species, we have coyotes all around us.  We hear them every night.

Coyotes are vocal.

Coyotes are predators.

We have chickens, cats and dogs that are ALL on the menu for coyotes.

We own four dogs, three of which are in a dog pen because, well, when they are out, they run in one direction until their legs will not run anymore and at that point they are usually very, very far from home.  All too often, they have reached this point in a neighboring pasture chasing the Chic-fil-a cows that belong to our dairy neighbor way, way down at the other end of our dirt road.

Not good.

So, unless all the gates are closed and we are interacting with them while they are out, they must reside in their doggie pens until such time as they can be supervised and interacted with.

Then there is Bandit.  He is our only dog that is not in a pen.  He showed up three months after we moved to the farm.  He just waltzed up out of the woods one morning while my son and I were having breakfast on the back porch.  He appeared to be an outlaw dog (thus, his name…) and he seemed to be in need of a place to rest for the moment, though we diligently tried to encourage him to carry on with his travels.  But he hasn’t left yet.  I suspect he isn’t planning to finish his journeying.  I think maybe we were his final destination seeing that he gets regular food and leftovers.  Everyday, too.

Bandit is a great farm dog; he watches over our colony of cats and is great with the chickens.  However, if the door to the chicken house is left open, he will go in and help himself to an egg at his own discretion.  He’s really good to visit the other dogs in their pens, too, though I don’t think they appreciate his cheery visits since he’s outside the pen and, well, they are not.  He’s also an incredible guard dog.  His guard post is our front porch.  Any vehicle that crosses the threshold of the gates is announced.

Repeatedly.

Bandit misses nothing.

Since his arrival, we’ve become very fond of Bandit.  He’s a great dog.

We also love our cats.  I don’t need to expound on my personal feelings about our cats………many of you already KNOW all too well how I love my cat……..so suffice to say, when we have lost one of our farm cats – we have been sad.  To date, the resident owls, a particular hawk and the vocal coyotes are all suspects to the loss of some our beloved farm kitties.  We have begun to put the cats up at night, much like we have to put up the chickens.

Fast forward to the Sunday after Thanksgiving 2005:  some of us were sick; some of us were about to get over being sick and some of us were beginning to get sick.  The weather in November was typical bizarre southern - warm one day, freezing and raining the next - type weather.  It wasn’t cold this Sunday but it wasn’t real warm either and there was rain predicted so we had that humid heaviness thing going on, too.  We were all sounding like we had a clothes pin on our noses.  I don’t recall the moon phase – but I’d bet it was nearly after a full moon.

It was dusk and the evening was approaching quickly.  My husband was out on the front porch and rushed back in to ask, “Did y’all hear that?”

“Hear what?”  I responded.

“Where’s Bandit?” he asked.

“I dunno.  Hear what?” I asked again with a big loud sniff and sigh.

“I think the coyotes are right here,” the Gladiator said, “come out here and listen.”

He never gets excited about wildlife sounds.  So for my husband to offer this dialogue, I was becoming mildly alarmed.

I kid you not, I thought the coyotes were in the chicken house.  Bandit was nowhere to be seen or heard.  But the other dogs out in their pens were stirred up and now barking ferociously.

Now I was fully alarmed especially since my husband is now loading the shotgun and telling me to get my coat on and to grab the spot light.  Darkness was falling, I couldn’t breathe through my nose and I needed to go to the bathroom (I knew there was no time for this option).  My oldest son was ricocheting off the family room walls now, “Can I go? Can I go? Can I go?  I want to go!”  In unison, he was told, “No, not this time.  Just stay inside.”

Out the back door my husband and I go, he with the shotgun and extra shells in his coat pocket and me with my biggest coat on carrying the spot light.  All I could hear was this hair raising coyote that was howling, barking, yipping, clacking, chattering back to howling, barking….  I was trying not to become hysterical and hoped we were not too late to save Bandit.  I have read too many accounts about coyotes and how they lure domestic animals – especially dogs – by sending a female out to cry and lure the dog to her.  Then the pack rushes in to attack and the dog falls victim subsequently becoming their prey.

As we approached the gates that lead to our upper 26 acres planted thick in pine seedlings (that are now anywhere from 6 to 8 feet tall with gargantuous briar patches scattered throughout them), the sounds were louder as if the coyote was only yards away.  I was fumbling trying to get the gates open to be quick as well as quiet as possible: we wanted to find and kill any coyote!  We were trying to walk quickly w/out running, but to be quiet and swift and all I could hear was the sound of this skin crawling pitch of howling, cackling, chattering, yipping along with the LOUD clinking sounds of the extra shotgun shells in my husband’s coat pockets.  While I am trying to trot and walk at the same time as well as breathe without sounding like it’s my last breath I whisper loudly, “Can’t you make those shells stop clinking?!  We need to be quiet!”

The coyote was getting louder.

We had to be right upon it.

I really needed to go to the bathroom but instead I turned the spotlight on and all I could see were Bandit’s foot prints in the dirt path through the pines and then what looked like more prints all scratched about like there had been an altercation among canines.

Now the coyote’s yelps were moving ahead of us, but slow, and were sounding more like distress yelps.  “They have Bandit and they’re dragging him away,” I whispered loudly.  I refused to let myself cry.  I was nearly running now.  As we moved, the howling cries moved, too.

It was officially pitch black dark and we were slap in the middle of the upper 26 acres in the middle of the pines with what we hoped was a fully charged spotlight.  The sounds of the coyote were almost right on top of us one minute, then ahead of us the next, then behind us……….it was as if someone was running around out there with a recording of coyote mating calls that will bring out the city-moved-to-country fools who will run through the woods at night kind of joke.  I was beginning to have visions of Jack Nicholson from his movie “Wolf” and wondered if at any moment he or a southern version of Bigfoot would come busting through the pine branches and we would be finding out EXACTLY what we’re really made of.

I decided we needed to be more aggressive and run in the actual direction of the howling and began zig-zagging through the pines towards the sounds.  Alan was coming behind me but seemed to be having problems with the briars.  Since I had the spot light, I would have to stop and wait.  Then we would rush on deeper into the pines.  As we were zigging and zagging through this random maze of pines, a flashing split second thought occurred to me, “Hmmmmm.  I’m in front with the light.  Alan is behind me with the shotgun.  If this howling, cackling, growling, yelping, chattering, crying thing comes at me, I wonder if Alan might miss and shoot me instead?  What will happen to our children?  How will they survive…?”  I just had to quit thinking.  So I made my brain blank.

We pushed on determined to save Bandit.

And then, the pitch black darkness was silent and absent of all coyote vocals.  The call of the wild had evaporated into thin air.

We stood still and I turned off the spotlight listening to the dead silence.  There was nothing.  Not even a blade of grass being crackled to indicate anything had ever been there.

“Where’d it go?” my husband whispered out loud.

I didn’t answer immediately still trying to hear anything.  “Where’d it go?” he asked again.

“A-W-A-Y!” I whispered back.

Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity of silence, I turned the spotlight back on and we began weaving our way back toward the house.  The only problem was that in the dark, it wasn’t so easy trying to find the path.  I was trying to breathe and not think about my still needing to go to the bathroom – I knew I wasn’t going to drop and go in the dark – because Murphy’s Law would have brought the howling Bigfoot right back and I had no desire to be bait.  The light was starting to act like it wanted to fade on us and I was now sweating and needed to blow my nose.

Since panic and hysteria had now passed, aggravation and irritation was setting in.

“How can you not know where the path is?”  Alan asked out loud no longer whispering.

“All I can see are more and more pine branches,” I whined.

“It’s right there!” he pointed out.  And it was - just a few feet on the other side the line of pines I couldn’t seem to get by.  I just hate it when that happens.

Finally, we were back on the path and walking silently toward the house in the dark.  All I could think about was Bandit and if he was alright.  I was feeling all jittery now that my adrenaline had subsided.  We both agreed that there had been SOMETHING in those pines and whatever it was just vanished in the blink of an eye.

We reached the gates and closed them up.  I checked in on the chickens one more time.  They were all lined up on their roosts looking all big-eyed from the earlier sounds of the night.  Our other dogs were settling in for the night as well all yawning in their dog pens.  As we crossed the big yard area and approached the driveway, we could see Bandit’s silhouette where he sat on the parking pad just outside our garage.  I put the spotlight on him and he was all happy lookin’ like, “Hey Y’all!  Where y’all been?”

We started laughing.  Chalk it up to just another of our city-moved-to-the-farm adventures.

I have no idea what we were chasing up through those pines.  I wonder if we were chasing anything at all.

Maybe, WE were the ones being cluelessly chased!

I have no doubt that it is entirely and remotely possible that the third shift NASA scientists were scratching their heads and thumping their computer monitors trying to figure out why Pac-Man was appearing on the sattelite imagery in east central Georgia that night.

Harriette K. Jacobs

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