Coyote Complex....

(Photo courtesy of me, cause I took it last year. I am thinking just by examining the details of the coyote's posture that this is feller I heard outside...)

A dog began barking at 4:07 in the morning from a distance of a few hundred feet of the house. Oh do not worry this is not going to disintegrate into a "shaddduupp" ya dang dog type post. First of all being the revolving schedule type people that we are, we were wide awake and about to make some fabu garlic fries.
Second of all he probably had a reason for barking, even if it was a silly reason it was his reason. Like he'd like to go for a walk now, or have some extra crunchy food or voice his opinion on the neighborhood rabbits.
Bark, bark bark, he went.
"That dog sounds really close." I say to my husband in that way a person does when they are unable to stop themselves from stating the obvious.
Sucked into the conversation pit of obvious-icity my husband looks up from his computer, cocks his head to the side and listens, answers, "Yep, close."
Then, as if things couldn't get any more exciting the barking dissolves into the mournful, goosebumps raising, ear piercing wail of a coyote.
"Ohhh, it's a coyote." I say (see obviousness is a disease. Treatable but pretty hard to shake)
Alan agrees, "Yes, it really sounded like a dog but it's a coyote." The circle of obviousness continues and we wallow in the pit of boring words that surrounds us.
But the coyote, he keeps howling, and barking.
Which is nothing new, gangs of coyotes run through the area on a nightly basis, serenading us with their eerie songs and scaring the beejesus out of us during scary vampire movie scenes when the victim is jusssssst about to get their throat sucked and the silence is complete as the vampire shuffles closer and then..... "Awooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo".
Chorus of coyote howls, which sound suspiciously like a pack of crazed lunatics on the loose, whooping it up California style, let loose so close to the house it actually sounds like they're on the sofa next to me. Which is saying something because our sofa is a love seat, and the coyotes would have to be in my lap to be on it with us.
Can I get a breathless "ohhh, yeah that's closssse." from the crowd?
Thanks.
But this night in particular the solo voice of the coyote seems mournful, sad and desperate.
This isn't just any coyote I realize, as I rise from my computer chair, half frozen with indecision and an instinctive need to right what ever wrong is causing this coyote such emotional pain that he's out there all by his lonesome in the dark crying.
This coyote is obviously separated from the pack and is crying out, his voice the only coyote voice on the damp night air, bouncing off the hills around and echoing back at him in a cruel mockery of his aloneness, perhaps tricking him for just a second, one second, that he's not alone that there are other coyotes out there also calling the same sad wail of his own, looking for company.
I stand.
Something needs to be done.
Some sort of chemical reaction has happened in my brain. I can almost see the bubbling beaker of frontal lobe potion being poured into the parietal lobe test tube of calm rationale and causing a frenetic explosion of a super-hero-wanna-be complex that froths through my nervous system like a 4th grade baking soda volcano's lava flow.
"Alan that coyote, he's alone. ALONE!" I say this to my husband with all the intensity as I would if I saw a brush fire, or a car jacker or ice cream on sale at the grocery store.
My tone alerts him, his auto pilot for stressed wife situation kicks in and he rises from his computer, fingers blindly hitting Command S, (saving what ever work he's working on) and turns to gather his wide eyed wife into his arms as we both listen to the lone coyote cries.
"Well it's NOT like you can go out there and do anything." He says in that calm, "everything is A-OK " way he has. The same voice he'd use if he saw the moon exploding, or a nuclear bomb about to crash on our heads, calm and collected his voice is the base to my acid frothed brain that is insisting I go help that coyote.
He emphasizes the "Not" in that way he does, with just the slightest firming of the word that I'm sure no one else would notice, but I do, because I can hear all the things he says even when he's not actually saying them.
I hear, in that slightly deeper, gently amused "NOT" that a coyote is a wild animal, not a dog. They could have rabies and at the very least sharp claws and teeth. That it's not our place to go out and interfere with the emotional needs of a wild animal and that I'm inferring a helluva lot into one lone coyote's noise. I also hear, as the "t" sound from the "Not" rolls off his tongue that he can practically see me in my super hero outfit that I really oughtta make some day to go with this complex I have. Popping up at strange noises outside, on alert, ready and willing to run out and fight on the side of justice and scared coyotes.
I sigh, deflated.
And suddenly, another coyote starts yipping from the other side of the house. It's voice joining the first.
No Disney movie music started swelling into a triumphant crescendo indicating dramatic and life changing, happy ever after events were taking place now, in case you blinked and missed it with your eyes...but it should have.
I gasped.
"HE'S FOUND!!!!!!"
Alan laughs, the coyotes do indeed sound like they're talking to each other and is that a hint of relief I hear in the first coyote's barks? Or is that relief just in my own head?
"The second coyote is telling the first one he thought they were supposed to meet over by the old road and that's why he's late." Alan says, because he can translate coyote and can hear what I'm hearing.
We barely have time to grin foolishly at each other, still hugging, still standing in the middle of the living room, a human part in the coyote soap opera of the night when the 2 coyote voices become what sound like dozens.
It's a coyote party, a reunion!
Everything is going to be o.k, oooookaaaaaaaay.
We separate and head back to our computers, the coyote party drifts away until their voices no longer are carried to us on the night air.
Having a wacky schedule means more than garlic french fries at 4:07 in the morning. It means getting to be part of the secret, dramatic life of the neighborhood coyotes.
I'm sure the coyotes could care less.