Coyote

Yesterday while driving home after a trip to Aldi with E, I came across a coyote after turning into our subdivision. At first I thought it was a lost dog, because it had no collar and I had never seen a dog at that house before, but then I realised it looked a little rough and wild. It very obviously wasn't a fox or a wolf, so that left it being a coyote? Anyway it stared at me for a while when I stopped the car to look at it, but then ran away before I could dig out my phone to take a picture and another car came by from the opposite direction. 

Right after we got home, I quickly unloaded our groceries and transferred E into the pram. I wanted to bring her for a walk and hopefully catch one of our neighbours outside during the the lunch break of her oldest kid. After dallying a bit outside of their house (like an awkward loser), I thought maybe they weren't coming out, so I decided to continue walking, and then spotted the coyote again running through the backyard of one of the houses on the corner. 

Just as I was staring at it turn to run away, one of the neighbourhood kids, R, came tearing down on his bike telling me about how there was a fox loose in the neighbourhood and how everyone was texting about it. I felt a little put out that I wasn't part of this text thing, but told him it wasn't a fox because I had just seen it over there. Then R started to freak out in an excited way ("I'm gonna get eaten!"), and then W came tearing out of his house on his bike and started freaking out too and complaining that he wanted to see it too, but was also scared. I told them that they probably had nothing to fear unless they were a chicken or a duck, but they didn't seem convinced.

Soon, W's Mom and sisters came out (the same neighbour I had hoped to catch) and I got more of the bigger picture from her. The text was that it was a coyote, and someone saw it earlier. Plus, she had also seen alerts from NextDoor in early Fall that there were coyotes spotted in areas not too far from us. I remembered later that Jon and I saw reports about coyotes off the I-170 and Ladue Road during Summer, and thought it was hilarious. Maybe it's the same one very lost coyote. Anyway after we walked R home, we talked outside her house. I said goodbye and was about to leave when we ran into another set of neighbours, and we started talking about the coyote again.

Anyway later when I did get home, I saw that I was actually texted about the coyote around 11;30am, right about the time when E and I left to go to Aldi. So that made me feel a little better. 

If you cannot tell this is the most exciting thing that has happened to me in a long time. Plus, coyotes always make me think of Wile E. Coyote. I don't think kids had that association anymore. Additionally, I also forgot that kids get weirdly scared of random things, and work themselves up into fits over it.