When the dogs went out at 1 a.m. Thursday, a canine — a coyote, I think — was barking and howling nearby. It sounded as close as the field just north of the house, so I stood on the deck while Summer and Dejah did their business down below.
I hope it was a coyote. The barks sounded like a domesticated dog, and if so the howls could have been a cry for help. But the howls sounded like a wild animal, and the moon bright in the clear sky is growing full, and so I assumed it was a coyote howling at the moon for whatever reason they do so.
Given that assumption, the sound was beautiful, another reason for settling in the country where wild animals still have a little room to be wild. I don’t know what was really happening out there in the dark, any more than a city dweller knows why a siren is howling in the night, but I find that I prefer the animal howl to the machine’s howl.
