I really want to be the person who pronounces it “Kai-yo-tes” but not like a Texan, but like the way I heard a Navajo man say it. But in conversation, or in my self monologue, it always comes out not just as anglicized bullshit, and even an effeminate, gay “kay-yo’-teees”. Which is a self insult as much as it is to the pair of them I saw on my run last week. There is an arroyo adjacent paved path near my current abode. A city and suburban feature I have found to be unique to New Mexico. Sure there’s parks and through lanes and bike paths wherever, but they never carry the same feeling. These connect the inside to the outside, for a city surrounded by nothing but dirt. Dirt that inhabits rabbits, and therefore, coyotes. They were large, looked healthy. Not the lone mangy things I’ve seen sometimes along the river paths. They looked like they were having fun, using this secured channel from high desert into suburb as a person would. They backyard dogs went mad around me. They stayed on the other side from me, didn’t even give me a stop or glance. Just trotted on their way to enjoy someone’s cat or rummage for scraps. Not sure.

I heard a while ago that some coyotes have figured out stop lights. And use them to cross roads safely. I believe it. Not that they can see the difference between red, yellow, and green, or even that they look at stop lights. I just thing they’ve figured out the pattern.

I wish these two knew the looming pattern. Sooner or later they’d be trapped, shot, run over, eat the wrong garbage, or be collected by animal control, if they were lucky. To be dropped into an environment that featured no 60% household food wasted.

There’s an old man who sometimes walks in the morning. Plenty of kids too. But, I wonder if they’d see the old bastard alone, walking damn near parallel to the pavement with his crooked back. That if he were upright would bring him to the nobly height of 5 feet. Skinny old guy. Can barely see. Would they tear him apart? Would some mom on her power walk, sugar cream coffee in Stanley cup she got for Christmas in one hand, latest iPhone in another, stumble upon the wrecked corpse of an old sad man. Eaten by wild animals a stone throw from her walls and mortgage payment. Would she speed dial her therapist or the police first?

After climbing the big hill. Turning around and coming back between neighborhoods. I remarked how close the homes are together. And how many they are. And how many suburbs in how many cities and how many houses and tenements are just jammed up next to each other. Sure we don’t snuggle in with our cousins like meerkats. But I think I’m safe to say we are the most social mammal. Maybe even most social land vertebrate.

The coyotes surely have a close knit thing. But even they have territories, lines they won’t cross. And when things get crowded, nature takes it due and they fight and starve, or they spread out. What suppresses that instinct in me? Or is my home, a box in a landscape of boxes, enough to sate my territorial mind.

When will we no longer be able to keep nature from taking her due? And reduce us to fighting starving, but at least appropriately spread out, animals?