on safety

The coyotes have been waking me up at night.

E told me, when we first moved, that there are coyotes on the farm. I made the mistake of looking up coyotes on the Internet. I thought they were small – maybe the size of a terrier. As it turns out, they are large. The size of a small wolf or a large but skinny Labrador. 

I did some more reading and found out that coyotes very rarely hurt people. You are more likely to be killed by a rogue champagne cork than to even be bitten by a coyote. It is very hard to eradicate coyotes from an area, but they are easily hazed (I am not making this up – the coyote deterrent strategy is hazing) and kept away from homes. 

Nevertheless, they are nocturnal and I imagine they have sharp teeth and ours like to yip and yell across the field at one or two o’clock in the morning. Their barks and howls are high pitched and short and sound like a pack of hyenas up to no good.

I wake up to the noise and our walls feel thin and the wild feels close. I have the irresistible urge to get out of bed and check that the door is firmly latched. I eye our thin wooden lattice in the faint glow of the heater’s power light with wary eyes and wait for the howls to subside before I roll over and bury my limbs in the safe warmth of my partner’s strong frame, slowly falling back into blessed sleep.