It’s not something I can just dash off in a paragraph or two, my encounters with coyotes, and I apologize for this taking longer to share than a cup of coffee but in order to understand their rather miraculous intervention in my life twenty years ago, some background information is needed. Here it is…


At the time, about 1986, I was married and living in the Illinois River valley on 60 acres of rolling, wooded paradise I’d discovered back in 1979. Yep, we were little hippie back-to-the-landers living off my then-husband’s inheritance and trying to resuscitate a broken down, decrepit piece of land and house with a creek and wild ginseng and hillsides of dogwood and tall, tall oaks and not another wild creature seeing as how the Umprhey boys who had preceded our purchase had spent the better part of 30 years trapping, shooting, skinning and eating anything that moved, in-season or not. We were there three years before we saw squirrels in our trees and it took the bitter winter of 1983 to bring deer to our cattle feeder. We were modest in our lifestyle, spending six years in a two-room cabin/shack we managed to rehabilitate by adding a composting toilet, a second woodstove, a sleeping loft and an attached greenhouse porch where we bathed in the winter. My youngest child was born in its kitchen doorway in 1983. Her older brother came there in 1980 as a small boy of three. Day after day we marveled out loud that we’d died and gone to heaven.

Now my ex and I were so far from each other emotionally and spiritually, I’m not sure how we managed 11 years together, finally divorcing in 1989. But as far as the land and The Farm were concerned, we were 100% united in nearly everything we did. And the first thing we did that fall we moved in was put up “No Trespassing: This Means YOU!” signs on nearly every fence post around the entire property. We even posted one at the end of our lane on the county road though technically it wasn’t even our property.

When I went back to work as a police officer in 1985 so we could build a new and more modern home, I made it clear to all the hunters they could just stay away from Scab Hollow. Which probably didn’t make me any new friends in the county. Fortunately, our few neighbors up and down the creek were of a similar mindset with us and we were able to create a tiny sanctuary of wildness even in the middle of west-central Illinois.

We were out in the country in an area that had seen little human habitation since the strip mines had closed 25 years earlier. It was rugged, like Tennessee hill country, and each autumn like the cycle of the trees themselves, we had visitors from all over driving out on the weekends to the crest of our hillsides just to imbibe the crazy quilt of texture and color. The sparse human population seemed to be invitation to move in for at least one bobcat (we had the prints identified by the county extension agent), the possibility of a wolf (I tape-recorded the night sounds one winter and confounded the ranger) and of course, our dear canis latrans—the coyote..

I’d grown up in the country and at 36--the year this took place--I had heard coyotes many times before. I rather liked the sound. I could believe I was even more removed from civilization when I heard them. I could not understand our neighboring farmers intense dislike for the animal but in retrospect I sense it had to do more with finding an excuse to go hunting something just for the fun of it. It seems easier to kill something we vilify and refuse to understand than something we admire. But the good ol’ boys who found their way onto our property that day in late winter 1986 were neither landholders nor livestock owners and the only reason I can find for their breach of our signs that day was simply to kill something because they could.

During the entire eight years I lived on the Farm and even today while my ex-husband remains there we had a firm belief that we could co-exist with coyotes. We had to do a little give and take, that’s all. From the beginning, we made a telepathic deal with them. Whenever something died—a chicken, a calf that was deformed, a lamb that was refused care by its mother—we would immediately take the carcass, rolled in an old sheet or plastic bag, down the field to a particular crossing of the creek that bisected our property where we often noticed multiple sets of paw prints. The next day, the carcass would be gone. The sheet or plastic blown aways down the field. In exchange for our offerings, the coyotes were not to take any healthy animals from our pens or fields nor were they to venture close enough to our home to frighten our children.

In all the intervening years, there was never lost a single animal to anything but the raccoons who invaded the chicken coop from time to time and old Scarface, the blacksnake who spent months harassing us and stealing eggs. But that’s another story.

So in the spring of 1986 it was more than a shock to be out in the garden with my kids and watch the windows on my house rattle from the percussion of a shotgun, the sound originating right above our heads and not that far from our home. I looked at my kids, I looked up the ridge toward the sound, went inside and grabbed a .22 we kept mostly to scare things off. I charged up the hill behind our house, yelling at the kids to go inside and stay inside till I returned, not thinking that whoever was behind the gun wouldn’t be able to see me through the trees and underbrush. Whoever this madman was, his actions could have killed my own children and I was hellbent on stopping it.

It’s a steep climb up that hill and a great place for the kids to wander because of the little dirt path that opens into a large open meadow with ancient oak trees (at least by Illinois standards) acting as guardians. As I came up over the rise, and ran through the trees, I was dumbfounded by the sight of three Carharted hunters, one of them my neighbor, Donnie, who should have known better than to hoist a shotgun near--let alone--on our property. I screamed at them to stop where they were and they did, miraculously. I could see as I got closer that one of them was holding a small coyote by the tail, her eyes glazed in death, her tongue lolling out to one side, steam still coming from her nostrils. And her small soft under belly swollen--with pups.

Well, a trio of men should know better than to piss off a woman with a gun. And shooting anything pregnant and dragging it in front of me was going to get somebody a royal tongue-lashing. For the sake of my job and their longevity, I put the gun in my non-dominant hand so I could wag my stronger hand at them to underscore the expletives I rattled off starting with my neighbor. Donnie was sheepish and apologetic stating they had actually shot her from my neighbor’s field to the north and tracked her here.

“Well, since she’s dead on my property, I guess she’s my coyote now, isn’t she? Get the hell out of here or I’ll report you either to the sheriff for trespassing or to the literacy campaign cuz none of you assholes can read!” Yes, I was cussing like a sailor more to keep myself from bawling in front of them than for any anticipated effect on their future behaviors.

“And another thing: while you were playing big game safari hunters aiming those fucking guns this way, you could have KILLED one of my kids! If I EVER see any of your sorry asses around this place again don’t even think about who’s shooting at you. Cuz it will be me. Let’s see how you feel when a gun is thundering over your goddamn head.”

The guy with the coyote tail in his hand had been slowly backing toward the fence but I was right there with him and I snatched that tail away from him—just before I spit on him. Yes, pacifist and Buddhist that I profess to be now, it’s still easy to relive how enraged I became, with the same sense of justification for my rage and immense gratitude it hadn’t been one of my children. In some ways, I felt the coyote had been sacrificed to save them from dancing up the path that morning and right into harm’s way.
It wasn’t until they had moved off into the bean field toward their truck throwing angry hand motions back at me that I finally looked down at the limp body and the tail in my hand. It was then I started to cry. Something broke inside me at that moment that has never been healed. I felt like my own sister had been shot. And with babies inside her. For what? A $25 pelt? But what fur it was. It glistened in the morning light and I traced the markings along her back to the black tip of her tail. So soft. I’d never felt anything like that. And still warm. I sat for 20 minutes slowly rubbing her backside and the top of her head avoiding the bloody hole behind her shoulder, pleading for mercy from something or someone, and not knowing what to do. I felt I owed her some small measure of gentleness and respect after such a traumatic end to not just one life but several.

I picked her up as carefully as I could and walked to one of our favorite old oak trees. I laid her at the base so I could head down the hill to get a shovel. When I saw my kids somewhat panicked faces asking what all the shouting was about I just shook my head “not now” and grabbed a shovel from the garden. Then I looked straight into their uncomprehending souls and said without any emotion, “Come with me.” When they saw the still, furry body, that I had unconsciously christened Layla, with open eyes and blood streaming down her pelt, they knew. Without another question about how she got here, they asked if they could help me. My son was a hefty nine year-old and we took turns digging a deep enough hole that she might not be discovered, dug up and her remains violated again. My three-year old daughter sat down and began to take turns rubbing her muzzle and then the coyote’s backside. The blood on the coyote’s neck didn’t seem to bother either of them. After we buried Layla and brought some wildflowers to lay on top of the big rocks we used to hide the grave, the kids ran down the hill to find their father to share the fullness of their first experience with life and death in Technicolor images.

Until I left in the spring of 1988, I had many conversations with Layla whenever I was on that hilltop. I found more beautiful rocks in the creek or on travels and they went on her grave. The kids and I scattered wildflower seeds over the ground in the fall and the next spring a crop of cosmos, black-eyed Susans and blue flax came up to camouflage her resting place even more. One of the last things I did when I had to leave the Farm (and the marriage in March of ’88) was to visit her grave and nail my friendship bracelet to the tree above her. My daughter had made it in school and it was one of my favorite possessions. I wanted Layla to know that I wouldn’t forget her—or this magical place.

With joint custody came a shared responsibility to transport the kids between my house--35 miles away where I attended college--and the Farm. We created a routine that I would drop them off on Friday evenings and he’d drive them up on Sunday afternoons. The next year they went to the local school and the drive reversed. In those first few years, we pretended amicability for the sake of our kids. He understood the grieving I was going through leaving the Farm, and this allowed me to maintain some contact with the place.

So on Friday evenings, I’d take the kids inside the house and head out for a walk just to smell the scents of the season or scratch the ears on old Sugar Babe our Jersey cow or see what was growing in the garden.

It was mid-October, one of those Indian summer Midwest evenings you think cannot feel, smell or look more perfect. I asked my ex -husband about going for a walk and was given the perfunctory nod of approval. “I’ll be back to tuck you guys in,” I remember saying to our children, as I headed up the hill behind our old house, the very path I’d taken that tragic day two years earlier. We had built a new house further down the valley in a lovely cleft in the side of the hill. But the old path was still there and my feet seemed to know where they were going even by the sparse light of a half –moon.
Normally, the walk up the hill across the meadow and back is at most 25-30 minutes, when you know where you’re going. I just wanted to stop by Layla’s tree and check on it and enjoy a few solitary minutes of the meadow which is always a treat any time of year. From the meadow you can see for miles around as well as the Milky Way on a clear night such as this one. And, after crossing that meadow nearly every day for eight years my feet shouldn’t need eyes, just a good pair of boots, I reckoned.

But something had happened to my memory. Perhaps my lack of daily contact with the Farm had interfered with my trust, my homing device. When I realized I was shivering all over on a nearly continuous basis, while attempting to retrace my steps, I admitted to myself that I was completely disoriented. I could find Layla’s tree alright and her rock mound underneath. I knew that to walk away from the mound on the far side of the oak took me to the neighbor’s field. So to walk back to the path that leads down the hill, I should just turn 180 degrees from Layla’s grave and head back through the trees and wildrose bushes to the path. The old fence line was still next to the path so from there I could just take hold of what fence was left to guide me down the hill. Besides, from the top of the hill you could now see the lights of the new house further down in the valley next to the pasture.

But nothing clicked. I walked in circles at least a dozen times. I was afraid to stray too far from the giant oak that was my marker. I’d go to the neighbor’s fence turn and peer into the woods across the meadow thinking I must be directly across from the path keeping the oak in my sightline. Then I’d walk straight ahead and find myself at a different fenceline. Which direction am I going? Panic was the undercurrent, along with the rapid drop in temperature.

The balmy Indian summer afternoon had given way to a crisp Illinois October night. Under a clear sky, that meant cold temperatures that could dip below freezing and I had come away with nothing except a button-down sweater over my cotton blouse and blue jeans. My hands were starting to get cold, as well, so I kept them in my pockets. Of course, I didn’t have a flashlight. Somehow I managed to find my way back to the oak tree and Layla’s mound. I sat down pulling my knees up to my chin and trying to create some warmth. For the first time that evening, I was actually afraid. I bit my lip to make sure blood still circulated and then just spoke out loud as if anybody could hear me, “Hey, I’m really lost and I’m scared and I need help. Please, somebody...”

I wasn’t sure how long my ex would wait to come looking for me, he who was so easily pissed at me these days. He might even think I got lost on purpose, so I could wrangle something out of him besides anger. And I refused to believe I could be so stupid as to get lost on my old homeplace. Too many racing thoughts tossing about and none of them of any use at this moment.

I sat in silence then for a few minutes my back resting firm against the tree next to Layla considering my next move when the first sounds came. One lone coyote singing a one-note song. ‘A-ooooo.’ I suppose fear would have been the usual reaction but for me, sitting next to Layla and never having feared them before, I just thought, “wow, nice to hear them, at least. I don’t get this chance in the city.”

And then there were two of them but the song was coming from a different direction.

“A-oooooooooo.” The note seemed to last a little longer than the previous one so I stood up to see if I could catch a glimpse of them. Then it came again only now it sounded like more had joined the chorus. Just that simple one note thing they do so well. This time, the song came from behind me, close by the tree. I stood up and walked out from under the oak just a few steps toward the origin of their call. Understand that I’m in a woods, heavy with oak and sumac and my only reference point is a large meadow completely opposite the direction I need to go and this one massive oak tree on a clear night with very pale moonlight filtering through a few of the branches. I need to cross through the darkest part of the woods, filled with brambles, vines, nettles and gullies to get to the edge of the hillside in order to find the path leading me to the house. And then the song came again only this time it lasted for quite a while and I knew: they wanted me to follow them.

I lurched forward forgetting to use my eyes for reference so I could listen for them and their sounds. After a few minutes moving through the woods and disentangling myself from various vines and branches, they gave me another call. I adjusted my feet in their direction and after one more long call from only one animal as far I could tell, I found myself nearly pitched over the edge of the old fence. I turned around and looked for them and listened again. But no sound came. Not another vocalization. I knew they had sung to me to help me find my way.

I had been gone nearly three hours, I was shivering and out of breath. My daughter reluctantly went to bed thinking I had returned to the city without even saying goodnight; my son was involved in a new mystery book and just looked up somewhat disgruntled and asked “what took you so long?” I toussled his hair, planted an unwanted kiss on his forehead and said I’ll tell you on Sunday. The ex? I don’t think he ever believed my story but then it wasn’t meant for him. Were they real coyotes or the ghosts of Layla and her unborn pups? I’ll never know. I do know that we had lived side by side with their kind and never had a dispute over territory, had managed to be good neighbors to each other and respectful of each other’s needs. Now just how many of us can say that about our human neighbors?

It’s been 20 years almost since that encounter, yet anywhere I live, even in this townhouse on a golf course, the coyotes seem to find me. They like to come especially in the evenings now or very early in the morning playing across the frosty grass. One will plop down on the mound between my fence and the tee. cross paws and watch me as if I’m the most fascinating thing on Earth. I watch and smile back. We seem to know each other sort of like distant cousins. And maybe we are.

Yvonne Scott lives somewhere in New Mexico on an un-named golf course (to protect the coyotes who ably control the rabbit population.) Her vantage point has allowed her to watch pups trotting out of their dens in early spring and most recently this winter a trio she calls Java, Coco and Mojo, as they harass the pigeons and hunt rabbits. At night they deftly serenade her with the songs she never tires of hearing.

Email: ivonna52( at )netzero.com