Coyote Howling Quotes

(She) got herself a real boyfriend and she was just crazy about him. Not jack rabbit naked and coyote howling crazy, but sugar 'n' butter, soft 'n' sweet crazy.

In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.

There was this thing, this chaos inside me. And it had a noise, a howling. That’s what it was. I was nothing more than a dog or a coyote or any other animal in pain. And even then I was trying to speak. But my words weren’t any use in the face of the terrible wind that was escaping from my heart. I guess it was from my heart. It hurt so bad. Why did it hurt so bad?

The weather here is windy, balmy, sometimes wet. Desert springtime, with flowers popping up all over the place, trees leafing out, streams gushing down from the mountains. Great time of year for hiking, camping, exploring, sleeping under the new moon and the old stars. At dawn and at evening we hear the coyotes howling with excitement - mating season. And lots of fresh rabbit meat hopping about to feed the young ones with.

– in the kind of town where coyotes chew on stray cigarette butts and packs of boys go howling at the moon.

In April, millions of tiny flowers spread over the blackjack hills and vast prairies in the Osage territory of Oklahoma. There are Johnny-jump-ups and spring beauties and little bluets. The Osage writer John Joseph Mathews observed that the galaxy of petals makes it look as if the “gods had left confetti.” In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.

The thing I heard howling in the woods. It was no Coyote.

Gusty McCabe, tha's m' name and tellin' stories, tha's m' game, If they all ain't true I ain't t' blame, I'll tell 'em all just the same.

I been out there. It’s no big deal. Except for the snakes, scorpions, coyotes, and bobcats and cactus.

In the distance, mongrel dogs were howling out the coyote portion of their ancestry. All the sounds of the night seemed to pass through a hollow tunnel of indefinite length.

I don't think that a novel is supposed to be a guide book to happiness any more than it's supposed to be a journal of one's personal pain and frustration, which most novels are today, unfortunately. I think the novels that are most important are those that are more on the order of those coyotes that howl on the hills outside of town. Something mysterious and wild and hypnotic.

What I can play is blues. She was never that into blues. I can salve with Lightning and Cotton, BB and Clapton and Stevie Ray. I can blast Son Seals singing Dear Son until the coyotes in the creek raise up a sympathetic sky ripping interpretation of the harmonica solo. Piercing howls and yelps. Sounds like it’s killing them and also like they love it. Which when you get right down to it is the blues.

That sweet scent was everywhere, that wildfire smell, the stink of disaster riding the wind, the kind that sends coyotes running from the hills and into suburban backyards to crouch and howl by swimming pools.

All alone, outside the pueblo, on the bare plain of the mesa. The rock was like bleached bones in the moonlight. Down in the valley, the coyotes were howling at the moon. The bruises hurt him, the cuts were still bleeding; but it was not for pain that he sobbed; it was because he was all alone, because he had been driven out, alone, into this skeleton world of rocks and moonlight. At the edge of the precipice he sat down. The moon was behind him; he looked down into the black shadow of the mesa, into the black shadow of death. He had only to take one step, one little jump.. He held out his right hand in the moonlight. From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing. Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the dead light. Drop, drop, drop. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. He had discovered Time and Death and God.

Outside, the engine-sound of the Desperation police-cruiser grew fatter and closer. A little farther off, the coyotes howled. To David that howling had begun to sound like the laughter of lunatics after the keepers have decamped the asylum.

Canis latrans,” Wolfenson finally remarked. Fincher furrowed his brow. “Latin for... barking dog?” “Yes, the coyote. They have a gift of making the howls of a few sound like the howls of the many.” He looked toward the roadblock of brick and mortar. “I believe that’s why the Landlord chose them as his messengers.

In America the vast spaces accentuate the vast spaces between people, deserts which stretch between human beings. It is a void which has to be spanned by the automobile. It takes an hour to reach a movie, two hours to reach a friend. So the coyotes howl and wail at the awful emptiness of mountains, deserts, hills.

If the roar of a wave crashes beyond your campsite, you might call that adventure. When coyotes howl outside your tent--that may be adventure. While you’re sweating like a horse in a climb over a 12,000 foot pass, that’s adventure. When a howling headwind presses your lips against your teeth, you’re facing a mighty adventure. If you’re pushing through a howling rainstorm, you’re soaked in adventure. But that’s not what makes an adventure. It’s your willingness to struggle through it, to present yourself at the doorstep of Nature. That creates the experience. No more greater joy can come from life than to live inside the ‘moment’ of an adventure. It may be a momentary ‘high’, a stranger that changes your life, an animal that delights you or frightens you, a struggle where you triumphed, or even failed, yet you braved the challenge. Those moments present you uncommon experiences that give your life eternal expectation. That’s adventure!

A pack of coyotes set up a sudden racket near the house, yipping and howling, so close by they sounded like they had us surrounded. When a hunting pack corners a rabbit they go into a blood frenzy, making human-sounding screams. The baby sighed and stirred in his crib. At seven months, he was just the size of a big jackrabbit--the same amount of meat. The back of my scalp and neck prickled. It's an involuntary muscle contraction that causes that, setting the hair follicles on edge; if we had manes they would bristle like a growling dog's. We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.

In April, millions of flowers spread over the blackjack hills and vast prairies in the Osage territory of Oklahoma. There are Johnny-jump-ups and spring beauties and little bluets. The Osage writer John Joseph Mathews observed that the galaxy of petals makes it look as if the " gods had left confetti". In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts, and black eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.

So, here’s how it’s going to be,” she continues. “The doctor says I’ve only got a few months to live.” Tucker’s mouth flies open and panic distorts her features. She rises slowly from the couch and stumbles toward the front door. Opening it, she goes into Ella’s front yard. Ella makes a move to go after her when suddenly she hears a cry from outside that makes her blood turn cold. It sounds as if someone has taken the scream of a screech owl and the howl of a coyote and mixed them in hell. Ella has a memory of reading The Hound of the Baskervilles as a child and trying to imagine what the eerie howl of the hound must have sounded like. Now she is certain she knows what it sounded like and why even the intrepid Sherlock Holmes was unnerved upon hearing it.

confetti.” In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.

Years later, in America, I was told that Navajo Indians believed coyotes ushered in the Big Bang of the world with their song, stood on the rim of nothingness, before time, shoved their pointed muzzles in the air, and howled the world into existence at their feet. The Indians called them longdogs. The universe was etched with their howls, sound merging into sound, the beginning of all other songs.

All alone, outside the pueblo, on the bare plain of the mesa. The rock was like bleached bones in the moonlight. Down in the valley, the coyotes were howling at the moon. The bruises hurt him, the cuts were still bleeding; but it was not for pain that he sobbed; it was because he was all alone, because he had been driven out, alone, into this skeleton world of rocks and moonlight. At the edge of the precipice he sat down. The moon was behind him; he looked down into the black shadow of the mesa, into the black shadow of death. He had only to take one step, one little jump. . . . He held out his right hand in the moonlight. From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing. Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the dead light. Drop, drop, drop. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow . . . He had discovered Time and Death and God.

I spent my summers at my grandparents’ cabin in Estes Park, literally next door to Rocky Mountain National Park. We had a view of Longs Peak across the valley and the giant rock beaver who, my granddad told me, was forever climbing toward the summit of the mountain. We awoke to mule deer peering in the windows and hummingbirds buzzing around the red-trimmed feeders; spent the days chasing chipmunks across the boulders of Deer Mountain and the nights listening to coyotes howling in the dark.

WINTER HAS settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds have gone. The teeming life that goes on down in the long grass is exterminated. The prairie-dog keeps his hole. The rabbits run shivering from one frozen garden patch to another and are hard put to it to find frost-bitten cabbage-stalks. At night the coyotes roam the wintry waste, howling for food. The variegated fields are all one color now; the pastures, the stubble, the roads, the sky are the same leaden gray. The hedgerows and trees are scarcely perceptible against the bare earth, whose slaty hue they have taken on. The ground is frozen so hard that it bruises the foot to walk in the roads or in the ploughed fields. It is like an iron country, and the spirit is oppressed by its rigor and melancholy. One could easily believe that in that dead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever.

Hawk-soar, and butterflies - water trickling, and especially the night sounds: owls, and fish splashing in the creek, the invisible sound of bats over the water, and the howls of the coyotes, the silence of the stars, the sound of the wind, the cool wind: both howling blue northers in the winter, and cool southerly prairie-scented night breezes coming up from Mexico in the summer, cooling the land and bathing us in blossom scents-huisache, agarita. Fire-flies,drawing light it seemed (and blinking it through their bodies) as if fueled by the presence of joy, or happiness, somewhere in the world, and that energy has, and still is, on Prade Ranch

we saw something swimming in the water, and pulled toward it, thinking it a coyote; but we soon recognized a large grizzly bear, swimming directly across the channel. Not having any weapon, we hurriedly pulled for the schooner, calling out, as we neared it, “A bear! a bear!” It so happened that Major Miller was on deck, washing his face and hands. He ran rapidly to the bow of the vessel, took the musket from the hands of the sentinel, and fired at the bear, as he passed but a short distance ahead of the schooner. The bear rose, made a growl or howl, but continued his course. As we scrambled up the port-aide to get our guns, the mate, with a crew, happened to have a boat on the starboard-aide, and, armed only with a hatchet, they pulled up alongside the bear, and the mate struck him in the head with the hatchet. The bear turned, tried to get into the boat, but the mate struck his claws with repeated blows, and made him let go. After several passes with him, the mate actually killed the bear, got a rope round him, and towed him alongside the schooner, where he was hoisted on deck. The carcass weighed over six hundred pounds. It was found that Major Miller’s shot had struck the bear in the lower jaw, and thus disabled him. Had it not been for this, the bear would certainly have upset the boat and drowned all in it. As it was, however, his meat served us a good turn in our trip up to Stockton.

The Desert A weary eye may see endless wastes stretching beyond the horizon, but the trained eye sees a story hiding in every grain of sand. A coiling tower of Babel rises from a rattler's knots, their tongues forking in the shade of a gopher's den. Sounds of birds on mesquite trees mix with cricket chirps, displaced at night by a coyote's howl carried on wings of shifting sands. Listen closely and you'll hear her pup's plaintive whimpers until she returns. The desert sky becomes a festival of stars, entertaining an exclusive audience of sidewinders, Gila monsters, scorpions and horned toads. Sun rises over the blackened mountains greeted by a whip-tailed lizard who bobs its head, saying, 'this is my piece of paradise, keep out.' The desert is no empty place, but heaven's own retreat filled with amazing grace.

[Curtis Carley, first field coordinator for the Red Wolf Recovery Program] decided early in the project that there was only one possible way of saving red wolves from genetic swamping by coyotes. Biologists were going to have to capture every red wolf remaining in the wild for placement in a captive breeding program. In effect, preserving the red wolf's purity required first bringing about its extinction in the wild and turning its former range over to coyotes and hybrids until biologists could produce enough "pure" animals, then finding a suitable protected preserve for releasing a captive-bred population into the wild again. How difficult was that? After establishing a certified breeding program for red wolves at Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, Washington, in 1974 and 1975, the Red Wolf Recovery team decided to examine as breeding candidates some fifty red wolves held in almost twenty zoos across the country. Using the morphology-howl criteria they had established, out of those fifty they identified but a single red wolf, a female in the Oklahoma City Zoo. They were convinced all the rest, plus their pups, were actually either coyotes or hybrids, and in the latter case the team insisted they be destroyed. When some of the shocked zoo personnel refused such a draconian order, in the name of purity Curtis Carley carried out the death sentences himself.

It is the phenomenon made known by the marine biologist Daniel Pauly as the shifting-baseline syndrome. The world as first seen by the child becomes his lifelong standard of excellence, mindless of the fact he is admiring the ruins of his parents. Generation to generation, the natural world decays, the ratchet of perception tightens. Gradually, imperceptibly, big sharks give way to small sharks, small sharks to baitfish, baitfish to jellyfish to slime. On land, the big cats and wolves become feral house cats and coyotes. The wild standard sinks ever lower and becomes ever heavier to raise. Few notice, few care. Eventually, nobody remembers that wolves not long ago freely roamed the Adirondacks, and hence there is mad howling over the suggestion of returning them to their homeland. Southern Californians panic on learning that a cougar track has been discovered on the fringes of their gated neighborhood - mindless that cougars roamed these hills and canyons long before gated communities drew their lines in the chaparral.

The stiff night smells like the promise of coming rain, though its scent is doused by the strong odor of corn mash fermenting with yeast. Afar off a coyote howls, then a bit later a screech owl, and in between shivers and sighs of smaller night creatures.

God hadn’t done that to me—the Collector had. He’d explained that even though God does have all this power, people still have free will. That means they can choose to do evil things, like the Collector did.

The coyote howled once more. Bosch thought he could hear a dog answering somewhere in the distance. “Are you like him?” she asked. “Who?” “Timido. Alone out there in the dark world.” “Sometimes. Everybody is sometimes.” “Yes,

There’s probably the lone howl of a coyote when you take off your panties each night,

However, the man was wrong. It wasn’t a hundred coyotes with bullhorns howling at once and it wasn’t the Devil himself. The things that had screamed that night was the soul of a shattered, hurt mother facing the loss of everything she loved, and that is something even the Devil should fear.

Gill writes in his commentary notes on Malachi 1:3:25 A learned Jew is of opinion, that not serpents, but jackals, are here meant, which are a sort of wild howling beasts, that live abroad in desolate places. Jackals are basically dogs, whose cackling howls are well known. Coyotes are similar in their cackling howls and are sometimes known as American jackals. Nevertheless, the Jewish scholar in reference was a poet who lived near Spain, named Tanchum ha-Yerushalmi, and died around a.d. 1300. This reference is known because of Richard Pococke (sometimes spelled Pocock), from whom Gill garnered this information (Micah 1:826).

I ride with the dawn, on the back of my trust, Through the open plains, in the dust. My hat's brim low, against the sun's high glow, A cowboy's life is all I know. I'm a cowboy, wild and free, The endless sky, the only roof over me. With my horse and my guitar, I roam, The prairie's vast, and it's my home. The cattle call, the campfire's light, The coyote's howl, in the still of night. The leather creaks, the lasso spins, Out here, a man's tale begins. I'm a cowboy, with a heart untamed, The rugged trails, my spirit unchained. With boots in the stirrups, I ride alone, The world's my stage, the saddle's my throne. There's a code of the West, deep in my soul, A life of grit, a quest, a goal. To live by the land, to stand with pride, A cowboy's truth, I won't hide. I'm a cowboy, and I stand tall, The mountains wide, they hear my call. With the stars as my guide, I find my way, A cowboy's journey, day by day. So tip your hat, to the cowboy's song, A life of adventure, where I belong. I'll keep riding, 'til the day is done, A cowboy's heart can't be outrun.

I ride with the dawn, on the back of my trust, Through the open plains, in the dust. My hat's brim low, against the sun's high glow, A cowboy's life is all I know. I'm a cowboy, wild and free, The endless sky, the only roof over me. With my horse and my guitar, I roam, The prairie's vast, and it's my home. The cattle call, the campfire's light, The coyote's howl, in the still of night. The leather creaks, the lasso spins, Out here, a man's tale begins. I'm a cowboy, with a heart untamed, The rugged trails, my spirit unchained. With boots in the stirrups, I ride alone, The world's my stage, the saddle's my throne. There's a code of the West, deep in my soul, A life of grit, a quest, a goal. To live by the land, to stand with pride, A cowboy's truth, I won't hide. I'm a cowboy, and I stand tall, The mountains wide, they hear my call. With the stars as my guide, I find my way, A cowboy's journey, day by day. So tip your hat, to the cowboy's song, A life of adventure, where I belong. I'll keep riding, 'til the day is done, A cowboy's heart can't be outrun.

They sat in silence until the howl of a distant coyote made her shiver. "He sings for his mate," Cade reassured her. "Does he think the sound of his loneliness will attract her?" Lily asked wryly. "I'm sure it is the beauty of his song." His voice contained almost a hint of a chuckle. "I'm sure that's what he thinks." Her scoffing hid an undertone of bitterness, and Cade was silent for a while. "Men often hide their fears with actions," he finally said. By

They sat in silence until the howl of a distant coyote made her shiver. "He sings for his mate," Cade reassured her. "Does he think the sound of his loneliness will attract her?" Lily asked wryly. "I'm sure it is the beauty of his song." His voice contained almost a hint of a chuckle. "I'm sure that's what he thinks." Her scoffing hid an undertone of bitterness, and Cade was silent for a while. "Men often hide their fears with actions," he finally said. By this time, the anger of the day had leeched out of her and into the cold stone. Wrapping her arms around her knees and resting her head upon them, Lily reluctantly gave his statement some thought. Cade had a way of saying things that made sense, even when she didn't want to admit it. "I suppose a man who wasn't afraid would be a fool. I just find it hard to imagine someone like you being afraid." Cade's low laugh wasn't amused. "Because of my size or because of my birth?" Lily considered this. "Both, I suppose. To me, Indians are like the wolves, fearless of anything. All I have seen or heard of them is the damage they have done. And your size makes you seem invulnerable, even though that is ridiculous. A bullet knows nothing of size. Perhaps it is your attitude. You look as if you scorn everything, even death." "I do not mean to give that impression. And warriors aren't fearless. As you say, only fools are without fear. They are just better at disguising their feelings. If Clark takes his band of men against the Indians as he threatens, he will find old men and women and children. Ride with him, and you will see their fear." Lily didn't ask how he knew of Ollie's plans. Half the ranch could have heard his shouting. Instead, she asked, "How do you know what he will find? Have you seen them?" "They are related to my father's tribe. Their fathers and sons were massacred by Comanches several years ago, and many others were lost in epidemics. They try to live by raising squash and corn and fishing from the river. They mean no harm. This land has been theirs for centuries. They do not understand the difference since the white man's coming." "I do not know how to stop Ollie," Lily murmured. Somehow she was disappointed that Cade had brought her out here to tell her this. He could have said as much in the morning in the middle of the yard. "I know how to stop him. Just tell me if you learn when he is to leave." "We don't need any more bloodshed." Lily rearranged her legs in preparation for rising. Cade caught her arm, and he was suddenly very near, hovering over her, his dark face dangerously near. "There will be no bloodshed." Perhaps

Were you following me?” she asked, hugging her knees and watching her supper cook. “Yes,” Caleb answered in his direct way. He sat down across from Lily, and the firelight did a primitive dance over his features. “I wanted to see how you could get by on your own.” He didn’t need to tell Lily that she’d failed the test miserably; she knew, and her pride had been stripped as bare as the supper rabbit. “I thought I could reach Tylerville, at least, before nightfall.” Somewhere in a nearby copse of pine trees an owl hooted, and in the distance coyotes howled at the rising moon. Caleb glanced toward Dancer, who was grazing a few yards away. “You might have made it if you hadn’t bought such a fool horse.” Lily felt called upon to defend Dancer, even though she privately agreed. “He’s pretty,” she said after taking several moments to search her mind for something favorable to say. Caleb stood up to turn the rabbit on its spit. “Look how far that got you.” “I suppose your horse could make better time.” “Without a doubt,” the major answered. “As it is, we’re both stuck here for the night, so there isn’t much sense in arguing.” Lily

The howl, Doc, not the silence of the lambs, the howl stays with me, I hear it, I scream, I raise my arms to the sky, I try, Doc, I try to defend myself, to protect my soul. Auntie Badeea used to say that jackals have howled at the innocent moon for aeons because they mourn the fact that they are not eternal, that when Death with his pale eyes comes for them they will be no more, unlike us who climb up Jacob's ladder to Heaven in God's embrace or fall to Satan's fiery Hell. I don't think so, Doc, I disagree. Jackals howl because we don't. The howl has been traveling for thousands of years, from the beginning of time, when Adam and Eve tasted the fruit and Satan triumphed and his son, Death, was born, when loss became our intimate, across deserts and seas the howl moves, loaded with dust and grime and brine, searching for souls to remind them to grieve, but we pay little attention, always avoiding, always moving forward, our souls filled with termite holes that the howl passes through, only whistling. Lost we are, so the jackals and coyotes, the wolves red and gray, howl for us, howl at the baby-faced moon.

In my life, I had heard hundreds of coyotes and even more dogs, but never anything like this except in television shows. Wolves had been extirpated from the Northeast more than a century ago. Never in my life had I expected to hear them howling in the wild mountains of New England. ((c) 2016, p 239)

I found my truck where I had left it, parked with the rear against a juniper. Water in the jugs had frozen. A mouse trap in the back still hadn’t caught the mouse who was living in my wool socks and eating holes in my plastic bags. I drove north. By the time the Milky Way was out I had reached the foot of the Book Cliffs and the remains of Thompson, Utah. The train comes through the town and was heading out for Christmas. I was an hour late. The train is customarily two hours late. I still had time to set pennies on the tracks. This was the only time I had seen another customer in the Silver Grill Cafe. Through the window he sat at one end of the counter gesturing toward the gray-haired woman who runs the place, sitting at the other end. I once ordered a cinnamon roll in there, and she peeled open a box she had gone all the way to Moab City Market a couple days earlier to purchase. By telling me this, she was emphasizing the fact that the cinnamon rolls were fresh. She put it in the microwave for me. Gave me an extra pat of butter, the kind with foil around it. I spent an hour once just up the street talking to the post mistress and her cat. I checked the WANTED bulletins, then ran when the train came through. If you are not standing at the tracks in Thompson, the Amtrak will not stop. They call it a whistle stop. One of the few left in the country. The gray-haired woman shut down the cafe, clicked off the front lights. Electricity was buzzing out of the single street light, so I opened the truck door and turned on the tape deck. After a while I shut it off because my battery has never proved itself to be resilient. A couple of freight trains tore through with the impact of sudden cataclysm, flattening my pennies. Then the buzzing of the street light. Then the coyotes. They were yelping and howling up Sego Canyon, where there are pre-Anasazi paintings on the walls—big, round eyes, huge and red, looking over the canyon. The train was three hours late. I stood nearly on the tracks so they couldn’t miss me with that blinding, drunken light. The conductor threw open the steel door. “Shoot,” he yelled. “It’s dark out here!” I dove through and tackled him with my backpacks, flashing a ticket in his face. He quickly announced that I had too many pieces, but the train was already moving. I looked back out. Utah was black. He pulled the door closed and the train began to rock along the tracks. When I came down the aisle I saw a few passengers who were still awake, on their way to San Francisco or Las Vegas. Overhead lights were trained on paperbacks in their laps. They were staring out their windows into absolute darkness. I knew what they were thinking; there is nothing out there.

The way he learned to sing was by imitating the songbirds: their warbles and whistles, their scolds. Before his stroke he'd been able to imitate certain notes and melodies of their calls, but never whole songs. I was sitting under the umbrella with him, in early March-March second, the day the Texas Declaration of Independence had been signed, when Grandfather began to sing. A black-and-white warbler had flown in right in front of us and was sitting on a cedar limb, singing-relieved, I think, that we weren't owls. Cedar waxwings moved through the brush behind it, pausing to wipe the bug juice from their bills by rubbing their beaks against branches (like men dabbing their mouths with napkins after getting up from the table). Towhees were hopping all around us, scratching through the cedar duff for pill bugs, pecking, pecking, pecking, and still the vireo stayed right there on that branch, turning its head sideways at us and singing, and Grandfather made one deep sound in his throat-like a stone being rolled away-and then he began to sing back to the bird, not just imitating the warbler's call, but singing a whole warbler song, making up warbler sentences, warbler declarations. Other warblers came in from out of the brush and surrounded us, and still Grandfather kept whistling and trilling. More birds flew in. Grandfather sang to them, too. With high little sounds in his throat, he called in the mourning doves and the little Inca doves that were starting to move into this country, from the south, and whose call I liked very much, a slightly younger, faster call that seemed to complement the eternity-becking coo of the mourning dove. Grandfather sang until dark, until the birds stopped answering his songs and instead went back into the brush to go to roost, and the fireflies began to drift out of the bushes like sparks and the coyotes began to howl and yip. Grandfather had long ago finished all the tea, sipping it between birdsongs to keep his voice fresh, and now he was tired, too tired to even fold the umbrella. .... I was afraid that with the miracle of birdsong, it was Grandfather's last night on earth-that the stars and the birds and the forest had granted him one last gift-and so I drove slowly, wanting to remember the taste, smell, and feel of all of it it, and to never forget it. But when I stopped the truck he seemed rested, and was in a hurry to get out and go join Father, who was sitting on the porch in the dark listening to one of the spring-training baseball games on the radio.

I can blast Son Seals singing Dear Son until the coyotes in the creek raise up a sympathetic sky ripping interpretation of the harmonica solo. Piercing howls and yelps. Sounds like it’s killing them and also like they love it. Which when you get right down to it is the blues.

I calculated the possible responses. 52 percent probable: She'd nod knowingly, tap her pen against her pad, and make some vaguely disapproving noise. 46 percent: She'd nod knowingly, tap her pen against her pad, and make some vaguely approving noise. 2 percent: She'd nod knowingly, tap her pen against her pad, and howl like a coyote. I attributed that last possibility to a bug in my calculations.

It is never certain for her that the wolves will answer each Wednesday. I wonder for a moment why they do. Surely they know that these are just a bunch of humans trying to speak wolf. Surely they smell us, a group of sixty people cloaked in lotions, colognes, insecticides, and deodorant - announcing our odiferous presence to an animal whose world is ordered by scent - standing in the woods a mere few hundred yards away. Surely they heard our engines as we arrived. Surely they could hear that our pitch is off, that we are an imitation. Yet they accept this and play along. Why? Wolves, it turns out, will howl to a variety of stimuli, including the sirens of emergency responder vehicles. In the late 1960s, when researchers discovered that the red wolf was nose-diving into extinction, they played electronic sirens in southeastern Texas coastal marshes and plains to elicit howls from wild canids. From the howls, they made probable identifications of red wolves and possible hybrids. Coyote vocalizations often have a series of broken yips and barns and emanate at a comparatively higher frequency, whereas red wolves will howl at lower frequencies that start “deep and mournful” but may break off into yapping like a coyote, according to a report authored in 1972 by two trappers, Glynn Riley and Roy McBride, who were employed by the federal government. Early surveyors noted, too, that the red wolves were more likely to howl in good weather and less likely to respond in rainy or overcast weather. Confined to their facility, perhaps the red wolves of Sandy Ridge howl to humans because it gives them a way to communicate with living beings outside their fence. Who knows: maybe they are simply telling us to bugger off and go away. Or, as frightened as they are of seeing a human, perhaps howling to a group of them on a dark night is more palatable since they do not have to look at us or be gawked at in turn. Perhaps howling is a way of reaching out on their own terms, in their own language, through which they can proclaim their space and their place on the land - their way of saying, “Even though I’m in here, behind this fence, I own this place.” Or maybe they just want to remind us that this land had been theirs for millennia before we invaded and claimed it. In the dark of night, I fantasize that their howls are calling out: “All this was ours. This was ours.

Despite years of inquiry, the origins of Canis rufus remain elusive. According to Fain and his coauthors, although hybridization has influenced gray wolves around the Great Lakes, eastern wolves, and red wolves, it is the red wolf that has been the most deeply affected by it. In addition, its extreme population bottleneck, and the artificial process of selecting the founders for the captive-breeding program based on morphology, further altered its genetic makeup. The lack of consensus over what a red wolf is versus what it once may have been exacerbates its conservation “purgatory” of being officially listed as an endangered species but perpetually accused of being unworthy. Was there a diminutive southeastern wolf that evolved in North America independently from gray wolves? Do red and eastern wolves share an evolutionary lineage with coyotes? We know without a doubt that when Europeans arrived in the New World, the eastern woods held howling, chorusing wolves. But the not-so-simple question remains: what were they?

Was there a diminutive southeastern wolf that evolved in North America independently from gray wolves? Do red and eastern wolves share an evolutionary lineage with coyotes? We know without a doubt that when Europeans arrived in the New World, the eastern woods held howling, chorusing wolves. But the not-so-simple question remains: what were they?

COYOTEE" "Was a cowboy I knew in south Texas His face was burnt deep by the sun Part history, part sage, part Mexican He was there when Pancho Villa was young And he'd tell you a tale of the old days When the country was wild all around Sit out under the stars of the Milky Way And listen while the coyotes howl Well he cursed all the roads and the oilmen And he cursed the automobile Said, "This is no place for an hombre like I am In this new world of asphalt and steel." Then he'd look off someplace in the distance At something only he could see He'd say, "All that's left now of the old days: Those damned, old coyotes and me." Now the longhorns are gone And the drovers are gone The Comanches are gone And the outlaws are gone Now Quantrill is gone Stand Watie is gone And the lion is gone And the red wolf is gone One morning, they searched his adobe He disappeared without even a word But that night, as the moon crossed the mountain One more coyote was heard

COYOTES" "Was a cowboy I knew in south Texas His face was burnt deep by the sun Part history, part sage, part Mexican He was there when Pancho Villa was young And he'd tell you a tale of the old days When the country was wild all around Sit out under the stars of the Milky Way And listen while the coyotes howl Well he cursed all the roads and the oilmen And he cursed the automobile Said, "This is no place for an hombre like I am In this new world of asphalt and steel." Then he'd look off someplace in the distance At something only he could see He'd say, "All that's left now of the old days: Those damned, old coyotes and me." Now the longhorns are gone And the drovers are gone The Comanches are gone And the outlaws are gone Now Quantrill is gone Stand Watie is gone And the lion is gone And the red wolf is gone One morning, they searched his adobe He disappeared without even a word But that night, as the moon crossed the mountain One more coyote was heard