Coyotes on a recent hike and other observations

Several knees have been jerking over my stories about Ben adjusting to the coyotes at the river.  Several responses have to do with stories about coyotes luring dogs into packs where they were presumably killed and devoured.  I’ve mentioned several times that there are no packs at the river where we hike.  Maybe someday there will be, but we’ve been hiking down there for 15 years and haven’t seen a pack yet.  Also, all my Ridgebacks have chased coyotes at one time or another and none of them have been lured into anything.  The mother coyote who has a litter every year wants the exact opposite.  She wants to be left alone.  The one unfortunate confrontation was when Ginger, an unusual Ridgeback who tried to make friends with every dog she met, tried to make friends with this female when she had a litter on the ground – and received a nip on the rump for her trouble.  I took her to the vet and had it cleaned.  That was a lesson well-learned.  Ginger troubled me with her friendliness more than once, but after the nip she left the coyotes alone.

Ben, now, for those who may not have been following this, was received as a three-year-old adult, and he won’t be four until November.  The river and its coyotes have been a new experience for him.  That he was going to chase them was no surprise to me.  I would have been surprised if he didn’t.  That he came back after a chase without his hackles up was a surprise, but after a bit more reflection, I don’t really recall checking my previous Ridgebacks for hackles after such occurrences so perhaps his response isn’t unusual. 

Some have gotten the idea that Ben is fraternizing with the coyotes.  That is a misunderstanding.  I intended to say that he and the coyotes are curious about each other rather than hostile.  I did say I couldn’t at this point rule out his trying something like Ginger did, but don’t really expect that to happen.  I also said that these two coyotes are probably the ones Ginger, Sage, Duffy and I encountered 2 ½ or 3 years ago; so they were used to seeing Ginger and Sage (whom I recently lost) and Duffy.  They were not used to seeing Ben (whom I received December 1^st, 2013).  One of the photos I took recetnly is a rather blurry thing showing Ben chasing a coyote.  I doubt that anyone can look at that photo and suspect fraternization.  I don’t yell at Ben when he chases a coyote, but when he checks the brush for their appearance later on, I tell him to “leave the coyotes alone.”  That’s what I have done with all my Ridgebacks and they all gave up chasing coyotes.  Hopefully Ben will give it up as well. 

[See photos for yesterday’s hike at www.lawrencehelm.smugmug.com – the last hike mentioned in the March 2014 gallery in the “River Photography” folder.]

Others have said they wouldn’t do what I do, but I’ve heard that all my life in a manner of speaking.  I enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 17 during a war.  My graduating class didn’t follow my example but instead wrote in my yearbook such compliments as “jarhead” and “bullet-stopper.”  My favorite sport for years and years was “free-diving” which consists of diving without tanks and spearing fish.  Almost no one could hear about what I did without asking, “Aren’t you afraid of sharks?”  After the movie “Jaws” I had the entire ocean to myself, which I appreciated.

After Susan and I were married she developed some ailments that made it tough for her to make it to work on time.  We both worked at McDonnell Douglas; so I got a motorcycle which allowed us to dash down between the lanes on the San Diego Freeway in order to make it to work on time.  She sometimes dozed off on the way to work.  I would feel her helmet hit mine and reach back for her, pulling over into the right lane until she was awake again before speeding up.  When we got to work she would take off her riding trousers, pull her skirt down, put on her high-heeled shoes and rush in to work.  I got reams of articles on my desk over the years describing every motorcycle accident anyone read about.   Many people assured me we were going to die.  Obviously we didn’t.  Not everyone should ride a motorcycle just as not everyone should own a gun, but for some of us these things aren’t especially dangerous.  Still, people who hear what I do can’t resist telling me how dangerous it is.  That has been going on for 63 years (I’ll be 80 in October of this year). 

I must admit, however, that I like the coyotes being down at the river.  I try to treat them with respect because their presence keeps virtually everyone else from hiking down there; which is the way I like it.  Some people will walk or ride bikes up on the levee, but I haven’t seen more than a couple of other hikers on the river in the 15 years I’ve been hiking down there.  Probably the few who have tried it have been spooked by something they have seen, possibly coyotes.  Some people ride off-road bikes or trucks down there from time to time, but not often.  These things invariably stall.   I’ve noticed a few of these guys working on their bikes, staring about at the brush apprehensively.  Notice Ben looking into the brush in some of the photos I took this month, but he isn’t being “spooked” by anything – rather the reverse.

From my standpoint I appreciate having a dog-breed which was bred to do the very thing I’m doing.  I know most Ridgeback owners keep their Ridgebacks as mere pets, but mine at least have a taste of what their forebears were developed to do.  Worried about coyotes?  Pshaw. 

Elephants and local coyotes

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/10688992/Elephants-can-tell-if-humans-are-a-threat-by-listening-to-their-voice.html

The above article refers to the discovery that elephants can make useful judgments about people based on the sound of their voices and perhaps other indications.  The article suggests that perhaps other animals can probably make similar judgments.  While I’m not inclined to anthropomorphize coyotes, it does seem that my local coyotes treat me and my dogs in a non-hostile and non-threatening manner.  I should mention in this regard that on one occasion a coyote went on a hike with my kids and me. 

It occurred in the Angeles National Forest perhaps 30 years ago.  Susan, my kids and I parked our car at a trail head and started on a hike.   We saw a coyote hovering about and took a couple of photos of it.  It soon decided to join us.  It went on the entire hike with us.  When it was time to stop for a snack, it wanted its share, which we gave him.  At the end of the hike (which took most of a day) the coyote veered away from the parking lot and disappeared.  We later learned that one of the park rangers had rescued this pup after its mother had been killed.  That outing probably colored my attitude toward coyotes when we moved to San Jacinto.  I’ve never tried to befriend a local coyote but I’ve never expressed any hostility toward any of them; so the sound of my voice (per the article) might not have seemed threatening toward them.  Also, I have discouraged my dogs from chasing them when they gave me the chance.  They have all done it a few times but then gave it up, perhaps to some extent because I urged them to “leave them alone.”  Will Ben learn to “leave them alone”?  Perhaps, but the two coyotes I have seen with him don’t seem too worried about it.

As to those two coyotes, a while ago, I don’t recall the timing but I had Sage, Ginger and Duffy at the time and he will be four in a couple of months.  We were on hikes in the brush when two exuberant coyote pups dashed about near us.  One ran directly toward us. We all stopped in amazement.  It looked as though it was going to run right passed us, but it veered off at a right angle about 10 feet in front of us.  A few moments later the other coyote ran across our path.  They were chasing each other and our presence didn’t stop them from their game.   Are the two coyotes I’ve seen with Ben the same ones we encountered as pups?  This article says coyotes live 10 to 14 year:  http://www.desertmuseum.org/kids/oz/long-fact-sheets/coyote.php  I suspect that these two are the same ones, and if so have they drawn conclusions about us?  They would have seen Duffy and me fairly regularly and not needed to interrupt their morning naps to pay much attention to us, but Ben will be relatively new to them and may account for their curiosity about him. 

To the best of my recollection I’ve never expressed any hostility toward them with my voice or actions.  Ginger and Sage both chased coyotes as young dogs, but gave it up as they grew older.  Neither made any move toward chasing these current two coyotes and of course Duffy always allowed me to talk him out of chasing them.  So what do they think of Ben?  I don’t know.  He is not an aggressive dog.  He chases them but doesn’t seem to be doing it as a predator.  His hackles don’t go up so he doesn’t seem to consider them a threat.  They run from him but in a rather nonchalant fashion.   I’m going to try harder to get him to leave these coyotes alone.  They perform a service for me.  Their presence discourages the squeamish from hiking on the river bottom.   Also, they are purported to eat a variety of things including snakes.  I have never seen a snake in any of the areas we regularly hike.  Could it be that the coyotes have cleaned them out?  I don’t know.   

Hiking, cougars & guns

One lady voiced a concern about a cougar where she hikes and thought that she ought to carry a gun but then thought that if she did she might shoot her foot.  If I had to shoot a Cougar I would wish I had my 357, however the chance of that need ever occurring is pretty remote.  Also, I don’t really carry a 22 in order to shoot a coyote.  If Ben got in trouble I would shoot into the ground hoping the noise would discourage whatever it was, and in the meantime I would run toward whatever the trouble was.  The only time something like that actually happened was shortly after we moved to San Jacinto.  Trooper may have been nine or ten and there were feral dogs at the river back then.  I didn’t know what to expect and so carried a S&W Model 19 357.  I had just finished getting my knapsack on when I noticed that Trooper had run into the midst of a feral-dog pack.  There were quite a lot of them, perhaps 20 or so.  Some of the larger ones were trying to get behind him, and he was whirling to face each one as it did.  I hurried toward them.  My other dog was a German Shorthaired Pointer who was perhaps 12 at the time and nearly deaf and blind.  When she got a whiff of the dogs she got behind me.  As I got closer to Trooper the dogs began veering away until only one dog remained, a dog that looked like a cross between a malamute and an Akita.  Finally when I was a few feet from Trooper the last dog ran off after his pack.   Trooper apparently thought that was great fun and wanted to chase them.  I told him we were going hiking in a different direction and he reluctantly followed me. 

From what I’ve read the dogs that are most at risk from coyotes are back-yard dogs, dogs that don’t get walked much and so aren’t in very good shape, and dogs that can’t get into the house to escape a predator.  I worried a bit about Duffy when he was growing up – not because of coyotes but because of owls and hawks.  I’ve seen evidence in my back yard of birds, usually pigeons, killed by something.  And also down at the river when Duffy was younger I’ve seen hawks flying above him checking him out – whether as prey or not I don’t know. 

As to guns, yeah, if you get one you should spend enough time with it so that you are comfortable and know how to use it.  I was a rifle instructor in the Marine Corps years ago and then later in Engineering at McDonnell Douglas used to go out once a week to a police pistol range for target practice with a couple of other engineers.  I don’t really practice any longer since I’d rather hike or take photos, but I’ve practiced so much in the past that hopefully I won’t be totally inept if I ever have to use one.  On the other hand even if one is extremely well-practiced things can go wrong.   People very experienced with guns sometimes make mistakes.

We are perhaps entering more the realm of psychology than the true danger of guns, coyotes, and cougars.  People have relatively different views of risk, danger and prudence.  I used to ride a motorcycle back and forth to work when I worked at McDonnell Douglas and later Boeing.  I would ride on the San Diego Freeway down between the lanes day after day rain or shine.  I had countless people warn me of the risk I was taking.  Some assured me that I would definitely die on the freeway.  I gave my last motorcycle to my son when I retired.  He road for a few years but lost his after a divorce.  Now he drives an SUV and I drive a Jeep.  But if I collected all the articles about motorcycle deaths people put on my desk while I was riding I could have filled a very large scrapbook.  Does this have more to say about me, or the people who clipped out the articles for me. 

To avoid shooting your foot, just remember not to pull the trigger until you get it out of the holster and are aiming at something you really want to hit. 

Might coyotes lure Ben into trouble?

Several people voiced a concern about the possibility of coyotes luring Ben into the midst of a pack.  I’ve heard about coyotes luring dogs into ambush all my life but never seen it.  My son had an Airedale that used to chase after packs out in the desert and the coyotes ran from it.  Here where I hike the coyotes don’t run in packs.  That doesn’t seem to be the best way for them to hunt.  Also, they seem to hunt at night.  We are most likely to see them (and never more than three at a time) if we get there before the sun comes up.

At present we don’t have cougars where I hike.  Their primary food is deer and I’ve never seen a deer down where we most often hike; so this wouldn’t be good hunting territory for them.  Also, my experience with Ridgebacks while hiking is if they are in doubt about the smell of something, they like to be right next to me.  I suspect I’d be stumbling over Ben if he smelled a Cougar.  

I’ve hiked since the early 80s with Ridgebacks.  I like to expose them to a lot of different things and situations and allow them to figure things out for themselves.  Here where we’ve hiked since 1999, I only worry about Ridgebacks when they are too young (and then I have them on leash) or are too old (and then they no longer chase things).   Whether I carry a gun or a hiking stick is more a function of whether I need both hands free to take photos than of anything else.

Ben, Coyotes and a Cougar

How was Ben going to deal with the coyotes?  I wasn’t really worried.  He is an extremely competent dog, but his relationship with them seems to be developing differently than expected.  Two coyotes have shown a lot of interest in him and he in them.  When he sees them he chases after them, but I’m not sure what he is thinking when he does that.  His hackles never go up and he seems more curious than predatory.  I don’t think these coyotes are very predatory either.   I finally managed to catch a photo of one of them on the hike yesterday – not a very good one but you can see it at www.lawrencehelm.smugmug.com in the “March 2014” gallery in the “River Photography” folder.  I’ve noted the beginning of each hike.  The 3-9-14 hike begins with a lot of photos of the morning sky.  We got there before the sun was up over the mountain; so it was still pretty dark, even in the sky; so the photo of the coyote is fairly dark also.

Is Ben trying to make friends with these coyotes?  Unlikely but I can’t rule that out because Ginger tried it a few years ago and got bitten on the rump instead, but that was by a female that had pups on the ground.  The two coyotes Ben is messing around with may be young males. 

When Ben chases after the coyotes, Duffy chases after him, but I call him back.  I’m carrying a Walther 22 nowadays, just in case things turn ugly, but I’m not expecting them to.  My local coyotes have seen me and my dogs all their lives.  When the coyotes were young, they showed a bit of interest in us.  That was true of my Ridgebacks also, when they were young.  If a female has pups on the ground, she will howl when we are near and sometimes follow us to make sure we keep on going, but perhaps it’s her mate that is doing that.  I don’t know for sure. 

The local coyotes have never concerned me very much.  I take precautions and when my opinion is invited (as Sage and Duffy invited it) I tell them “leave them alone.”  Ben though hasn’t invited my opinion much so far.  He runs into the brush and is gone for a three or four minutes.  When I knew he was going in there after coyotes I expected to hear some snarling and barking, but I heard nothing; which is fine, but then he returned without his hackles up. 

I became a little more concerned about his safety when I read about a Cougar that killed a 100-pound German Shepherd a few towns east of me.  Apparently some policemen fired some guns in order to scare it off and it didn’t scare worth a darn.  When the animal control people decided to go after it, they couldn’t find it.  http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/03/05/mountain-lion-kills-large-family-dog-in-fontana/   There are continuous mountains from Fontana to the area where we hike so a Cougar could travel the 42 mile distance if he had a mind to.  That is beyond the typical range of a Cougar, but if he were fairly young without an established territory perhaps he might decide it prudent to move out of Fontana.  I think we’re okay but I am considering taking a heavier gun than my Walther 22 on our hikes – just thinking about it at this point.  Since I’m leaning toward lighter-weight cameras nowadays, a heavier gun seems counter-productive.  I wonder what my coyotes would think about a Cougar moving into their territory.

Contention at Oxford in 1925

My otherwise gentle Ridgeback enjoys “fence-fighting with dogs in my neighbors’ yards, and the gentle people of Lit-Ideas, so it has been averred recently, enjoy (presumably) a fight from time to time.  It was not so very different in Oxford in 1925 (quotes are from Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien):

“. . . It should be understood that an Oxford Professor, unlike those in many other universities, is not by virtue of his office necessarily in a position of power in his faculty.  He has no authority over the college tutors who in all probability make up the majority of the faculty staff, for they are appointed by their colleges and are not answerable to him.  So if he wishes to initiate some major change of policy he must adopt persuasive rather than authoritarian tactics.  And, on his return to Oxford in 1925, Tolkien did wish to make a major change: he wanted to reform certain aspects of the Final Honour School of English Language and Literature. 

“The years since the First World War had widened the old rift between Language and Literature, and each faction in the English School – and they really were factions, with personal as well as academic animosities – delighted to interfere with the syllabus of the other.  The ‘Lang.’ side made sure that the ‘Lit.’ students had to spend a good deal of their time studying the obscurer braches of English philology, while the ‘Lit.’ camp insisted that the ‘Lang.’ undergraduates must set aside many hours from their specialization (Anglo-Saxon and Middle English) to study the works of Milton and Shakespeare.  Tolkien believed that this could be remedied.  What was even more regrettable to him was that the linguistic courses laid considerable emphasis on the study of theoretical philology without suggesting that undergraduates should read widely in early and medieval literature.  His own love of philology had always been based on a knowledge of literature, and he determined that this state of affairs should be changed.  He also proposed that Icelandic should be given more prominence in the syllabus; this latter hope was one reason for the formation of the Coalbiters. 

“His proposals required the consent of the whole faculty, and at first he met with a good deal of opposition.  Even C. S. Lewis, not yet a personal friend, was among those who originally voted against him.  But as the terms passed, Lewis and many others came over to Tolkien’s side and gave him their active support.  By 1931 he had managed (‘beyond my wildest hopes’, he wrote in his diary) to obtain general approval for the majority of his proposals.  The revised syllabus was put into operation, and for the first time in the history of the Oxford English School something like real rapprochement was achieved between ‘Lang.’ and ‘Lit.’.

On mellowness in old age

On page 105 of his biography of Tolkien, Carpenter refers to a time after Tolkien’s wife had died.  Tolkien was by that time famous and realized someone would write his biography.  He wrote to his son Christopher about Edith:  “She was (and knew she was) my Luthien.  I will say no more now.  But I should like ere long to have a long talk with you.  For if as seems probable I shall never write any ordered biography – it is against my nature, which expresses itself about things deepest felt in tales and myths – someone close in heart to me should know something about things that records do not record: the dreadful sufferings of our childhoods, from which we rescued one another, but could not wholly heal wounds that later often proved disabling; the sufferings that we endured after our love began – all of which (over and above personal weaknesses) might help to make pardonable, or understandable, the lapses and darknesses which at times marred our lives – and to explain how these never touched our depths nor dimmed the memories of our youthful love.  For ever (especially when alone) we still met in the woodland glade and went hand in hand many times to escape the shadow of imminent death before our last parting.”

Carpenter discusses Tolkien’s eventful life up until 1925 when he became a professor at Oxford.  He is only on page 118 by that time and has to get to page 260 before he is done, and he seems to find the prospect daunting.  He writes, “And after this, you might say, nothing else really happened.  Tolkien came back to Oxford, was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon for twenty years, was then elected Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, went to live in a conventional Oxford suburb where he spent the first part of his retirement, moved to a nondescript seaside resort, came back to Oxford after his wife died, and himself died a peaceful death at age eighty-one.  It was the ordinary unremarkable life led by countless other scholars; a life of academic brilliance, certainly, but only in a very narrow professional field that is really of little interest to laymen.  And that would be that – apart from the strange fact that during these years when ‘nothing happened’ he wrote two books which have become world best-sellers, books that have captured the imagination and influenced the thinking of several million readers.  It is a strange paradox, the fact that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are the work of an obscure Oxford professor whose specialisation was the West Midland dialect of Middle English, and who lived an ordinary suburban life bringing up his children and tending his garden.”

A week ago I hired a new house-keeper.  She said she preferred working for old people because they are mellower.  I will be 80 this coming October and qualify as “old,” but mellow?  I later asked Susan (who will be 70 this coming December) if I had become mellower, and she scoffed at the idea.  The house-keeper must have come to a similar conclusion, for she never arrived.  But what of Tolkien immersed as he was in Anglo Saxon literature and Hobbits?  Did he become mellow in his old age?  Carpenter visited Tolkien in 1967 just four years before Edith Tolkien’s death in 1971 (at 81) and Tolkien’s own death in 1973 at the same age.  Here are a few words describing how the not-at-all mellow Tolkien appeared to Carpenter:

“I am still nervous that there will be other and harder questions, doubly nervous because I cannot hear everything that he is saying.  He has a strange voice, deep but without resonance, entirely English but with some quality in it that I cannot define, as if he had come from another age or civilization.  Yet for much of the time he does speak clearly.  Words come out in eager rushes.  Whole phrases are elided or compressed in the haste of emphasis.  Often his hand comes up and grasps his mouth, which makes it even harder to hear him.  He speaks in complex sentences, scarcely hesitating – but then there comes a long pause in which I am surely expect to reply.  Reply to what?  If there was a question, I did not understand it.  Suddenly he resumes (never having finished his sentence) and now he reaches an emphatic conclusion.  As he does so, he jams his pipe between his teeth, speaks on through clenched jaws, and strikes a match just as the full stop is reached.”

Tolkien was mellower in his letter to his son, but when Carpenter questioned him about his writings, he became very intense.  And while none of us can be intense all the time surely we need to be intense in our thinking and talking (or writing) about subjects important to us.  And if we have come to conclusions about our subjects we are probably going to discuss or defend them with a good deal of intensity.  We aren’t mellow in the sense of being neutral.  We worked hard to arrive at them.  There is no unsubscribing from this “Hotel California” for some of us who remain intense, even as old fellows, even unto the end.