Lucky the Coyote...his story.

Due to the fact that I had very spicy tacos last night I am up early ..too early to do any scheduled work projects..so it's time for the story of Lucky the Coyote...of Coyote Bay, no less.

It all began because we have great neighbors who love animals. One older couple, Rae & Ken, in particular loved their 2 adopted Baja dogs which they would dutifully take for a long walk through the desert near our houses every morning. It was a routine they had been doing for many, many years. Walk past on our seawall for a morning's greeting, then off on their nature path. Well, one fine morning they came back from their walk and were excited to show us what they had 'found'. It was a young coyote pup and they had spotted it near a den and thought it might be in trouble....I really think they thought at the time that it was a pooch! Being fearful that the poor little thing could not survive in such a place, they decided to save it's life and take it home as dog number 3. I tried to tell them that this dog was no dog...it was a coyote pup and they should have left it where it was, because now the coyote b-tch would smell human scent on the pup and probably abandon it in favor of the other pups that were surely in the den. Well, it was out of the question, Rae says, she knew she could give that coyote a good home and everything would be just fine. Besides, it looked so much like a smallish collie or shepard, didn't it? We are naming him Lucky. OK, says I, Good luck with Lucky.

Lucky grew rapidly on the diet that Ken and Rae provided for it...they doted on him. They would come by in the mornings again...2 dogs out front and Lucky going everywhere he could on a leash..round and round...winding up the couple in the rope every minute or so. It was hilarious with our coffees. Some time passed and Lucky became full grown...now he knew how to put a half-hitch in that lease and really got the couple trussed up good. The other 2 little dogs gave Lucky a wide berth...as did all the other pets in the neighborhood..including a certain cat belonging to NOLS, our local kayak school. The story goes that Lucky had got loose and was trying to make a meal out of the fat cat next door at NOLS. He may have already accounted for a couple of other fursnacks in the area..Rae & Ken's friendship with other pet owners was getting a little strained in Coyote Bay.

The Coyles began to see that taking Lucky back to Palm Springs with them might not sit to well with their neighbors there either...those lazy Palm Springs poodles would barely whet Lucky's appetite for slow food.

The residents of Coyote Bay finally had had enough of Lucky chasing everything up a tree. It was time for him to go... The Coyle's reluctantly said OK..sniff, sniff...loaded up their 2 dogs into a motorhome and left for California...leaving the rest of us to decide Lucky's fate.
We all get together and plot.... Jeez, how do we get rid of Lucky? We can't just shoot him...or can we? NO..NO, after all, he is..was..a pet. Besides, I doubt the police would think it legal for foreigners to begin blasting the wildlife.

'Well, why don't we tranquilize Lucky with some valium and first catch him, then cage him, then recage him, and haul his ass to Timbuktu...then he can do whatever he wants.' Sounds like a plan! Who's got valium? As fortune would have it, one of the wives was an ex-nurse, had some valium, and would part with some to get rid of Lucky. We decided the best way to get Lucky to eat the bad tasting stuff was to stuff one into a weiner and toss it to him as he came by chasing somebody's poor little kitty. The damn Lucky ate all of the weiners and all 5 valium that we had stuffed into them. We followed and chased that coyote all over the place but he wouldn't slow down for nada. Finally he sits down once and yawns...Aha! Now we gotcha!..but No, he's up and running again when we close in with my salmon net. Did I mention my brainstorm of using a salmon net? Didn't work.

Then I remember my old parrot cage...large enough for twenty Luckys! Throw another weiner in there and have a person standing by with a pull rope on the door to trap that wiley bastard. Well, by Golly, it worked! We had him .. at least in the cage. Now he went a little ballistic when he found himself in solitaire..jumping and carrying on like we were gonna skin him. How that coyote could have so much energy with all that valium in him I will never know.

NOLS people bring over a smaller cage suitable for transporting Lucky to his new home. We shoo him into it with some inventive rug flapping and more weiners...from my fridge this time.

Lucky was driven damn near to Loreto..cuz nobody wanted him to find his way home again very soon. He was given a large container of dog food, water, and a 'Lucky, you are on your own!' goodbye.

Every now and then when I hear a coyote howl nearby I check my supply of weiners.

Pompano