“Something uttered a deep throated growl at me. A warning. This was not some cute woodland creature from a television cartoon. The stench of something primordial was in the air, more than blood, less than my suddenly dry mouth, and I knew that I had somehow in that moment slipped a rung on the food chain.”
- Brigid
Been there– nothing stirs the old blood like realizing that something large, furry and ill-tempered stands between you and home. My equipment shed stands about 100 yards from my house, on the northern face of a hill. In the winter time, it gets dark quickly in the little grove of trees that surround the shed. More than once I’ve been working on a mower or tractor at night and looked out the shed door to see multiple pairs of eyes. Not the low to the ground eyes that signal a rabbit or armadillo, but the eyes that signal a coyote. Needless to say, this provided a great incentive to quit working on equipment at night.
In addition to the coyotes (two groups, about 6-8 members in each), my area is home to at least two bobcats (possibly three, I think it’s two males with bordering territory and a younger female), a group of red wolves (less than a half dozen members), a pair of red foxes, a pair of gray foxes, and the kicker– a pair of Florida panthers. Nothing says “stay inside the rest of the week” like hearing the scream of a female panther looking for a mate.