I’ve spent more time chasing things with a whip in the last week than I have in the past two years. Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m chasing coyotes. With my dressage whip. Why, you ask? Simple.
They have decided that my farm is a snack bar. And now with moving, we decided not to purchase a rifle. Seriously, I do think my Indian name would have been “Chases Coyotes With Whip”. And I’m not talking about late at night. No siree! I’m talking about broad daylight!
The one I just chased off from the bottom of the pasture was little for coyotes around here. Oh yes! He was standard sized. And oddly, he ran right past Mo and didn’t even stop to sniff out the snack waiting for him. Either he knew he was in enemy territory or he was full. Mo’s pretty lucky anyways, I guess.
-OR-
After the debacle of the other evening, the coyotes are steering clear because they think I’m crazy.
You see, it was evening, not quite dusk yet and coyotes were on the dog trail, just 30 feet from the house, yipping and calling. It was still light out, bright out and most of the cats were outside, or so would have been normal for them. I was in the living room, basking in the glow of a successful furniture or workout equipment sale, gleeful that we had the deposit money necessary to move Casey and another heavy item less that I had to help lift twice in coming days (once on the truck, once off). And from the office, Bad Pants yells, “Coyote!” That was it. I grabbed the Dog Dazer and my whip and went flying outside.
Now, I should tell you that the Dog Dazer is an ultrasonic device I bought after being hassled by a neighboring Chocolate Lab last winter. It’s supposed to stop aggressive dogs by making a noise that confuses and startles them. And it works. At least on dogs. But apparently, not on coyotes.
By the time I got out the door and part way up the hill, it had moved higher up the hillside. Somewhere, on the other side of the blackberry and poison oak tangle, it had found prey and was yipping for it’s pack mates to come assist with the kill. Not knowing if it was one of my cats it had cornered, I started screaming, “The Snack Bar is CLOSED!” and I cracked my whip. Ok, less like cracking, but the damn thing whistled in a way that probably reminded the rest of the pack of bullets because their voices started moving off, instead of continuing in the direction of the one yipping near me.
The yipping continued. I paused to locate the direction of the sound. The yipping continued. Clearly this coyote had something cornered still. In hopes of driving the coyote off I yelled, “If you eat one of my cats, I swear I’ll beat you to death with my whip!” Yes, I’m sure I sound like a crazy person to my neighbors, even if they don’t understand much English. The yipping stops. Just suddenly dead quiet.
About this time, Bad Pants comes out with his big mag-light and tells me to not go farther. He’ll go investigate. Ok, he’s a few seconds behind because he was smart enough to put real shoes on, not just slide into flip-flops like I did.
Up the hill he goes, plowing through the underbrush towards the last location of the sound, ready to bludgeon to death a coyote eating one of our cats. (Please remember, this is within feet of our house, in dog patrolling zone so it smells like dog pee everywhere).
While he’s going up the hill, I do a head count on our cats. All are accounted for. Lucky for me, only Salem and Mo were outside. But then, Mo lives outside by choice. Salem is sitting on the deck railing, fluffed to three times his normal size, waiting for the door to magically open.
Mo was sitting calmly under the rear bumper of our truck, just hanging out like this is all an every day occurrence. Apparently he believes the coyotes won’t bother him. (And after what I saw this morning, I just might have to agree!)
Bad Pants comes back down the hill, this time using a dog trail. He reports that he saw a lot of tracks about 20 feet above the lower dog trail, where it loops back around up the hill, but can’t locate whatever it was the coyote was after. Whatever it was, it wasn’t one of MY cats.
Guess I should go get a new lunge whip since Luna chewed mine a while back. At least I can get that to crack nicely and not just make a bullet-like whistle…
And yes, I’m a crazy person who chases coyotes with a whip.
Yep. Crazy good will serve you well in the Southland 😉
Mo sounds like Porch Cat. (I know. Creative name huh?) I think that batty, grumpy, pissy old bat cat could take on a Mack truck and WIN.
Mo is not really pissy or nasty. Ok, maybe I should amend that. He’s not all upstairs and has bad litterbox behaviors, or lack there of. Hence, why he was banished to outside. But now, he’s uncomfortable inside even for grooming purposes (he gets matted) and is stressed if I try to bring him in when it’s cold outside. He is happy as a clam outside, so outside he stays!
Only a few more days to go… gee, think the coyotes will miss you? I bet you’ll miss the heck out of them!
*ducking now so you don’t throw moving boxes at me*
At least the coyotes are making sure I get my exercise, right? And I’m glad Casey and the goats were at the top of the pasture eating hay so Casey didn’t feel the need to kick at the coyote and maybe hurt himself, again. Yes, Case kicked a coyote through the fence a while back and was ouchie for a couple days.
She’ll miss the coyotes, but her aim will improve eventually. 😀
Hey now! I have great aim! Just ask the Marine. I popped him in the face once with a lunge whip when we were dating because he was making fun of me. And he was in his car, with the window down only a couple of inches.
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Wow. Those coyotes are gettign mighty bold! Maybe they think its a game 🙂
Or they know I could stand to lose a few and need the exercise?
The coyotes here get really bold! I used to chase them with my truck! Thos buggers are FAST!!! I also had slingshot but was a horrible aim. Always wanted to get good at that but never put in the time to practise. Hawky keeps them away from the house… and has the scars to prove it!
I will tell you the same thing I told Chelsi, if you don’t have a firearm a paint ball gun is a nice alternative. One of the nicer ones that needs compressed air – crank it all the way up, freeze the paint balls, fire away. You’ll know when you’ve hit your mark, they’ll yelp and run for it.
I used to use reg unfrozen paint balls to discourage strays from trying to hang out with our dog while we lived in town. You could always tell which dogs would run through our yard – they’d be well marked with what’ve color of paint balls I happened to be using…
Paint ball gun! Why didn’t I think of that before! And we even have one! Thanks Steph!
ROFL! I know it’s not funny, but just picturing you out there like a wild dominatrix with the coyotes cracks me up!
Maybe Mo thinks he’s wearing an Invisibility Cloak and is invisible to coyotes?
~Lisa