A wily encounter in woods

It was getting to be dusk and the first fireflies were darting in the fading light as I meandered along the forest trail in the North Carolina mountains.

I was walking with Tennessee and Koko, our two sort-of Labs, out for their evening constitutional.

They love it up here in the forest. There is more to bark at than back home in Tampa, where there is little more than neighbor dogs or the occasional squirrel. Up here there are rabbits and even the flash of a deer. There are bears in the area, too, but they pretty much stay off the trails.

Suddenly he was standing there in the middle of the path, maybe 25 yards away. Lean and only a little shaggy, the coyote stared directly at us.

For only a moment everyone was motionless, peering at each other in the dusk. Just as suddenly Tennessee and Koko went nuts, pulling forward on their leashes toward the figure ahead of them.

The coyote stood there for maybe five more seconds. Then it turned and loped a few yards down the trail in the other direction before disappearing off the path through a thicket of rhododendron.

The dogs pulled me along to the spot where the coyote had slipped into the woods and strained at their leashes, barking into the darkness, but he was long gone.

Return of the coyote

There have been stories recently about coyotes returning in greater numbers to the Carolina mountains and even here in Transylvania County southeast of Asheville.

But then this is the forest. For all I know Bigfoot has a vacation home up here with all the other creatures, including those thousands of Floridians who migrate this way during the humid summers.

Now there are apparently coyotes meandering around the Tampa Bay area and other parts of Florida. There even was a story in Mother Trib recently about coyotes on Treasure Island.

It always surprises me that some creatures can survive in our increasingly urban world. Once in a while I can sit in our South Tampa backyard and a raccoon will scurry across a power line or the dogs will start barking loudly and I'll find a possum cowering in a corner by the fence.

Every week or so there is a story of some alligator crawling out of a river or a pond and parking itself on someone's porch. The story on TV will show the gator with its snout wrapped up being loaded onto a truck, its destiny a mystery.

Born to be roadkill

How do these critters make it, year after year, in a place where if you're not careful crossing any street you're likely to end up roadkill?

I felt a little melancholy as I headed back down the wooded trail with the still excited dogs. There was something unsettling about watching the coyote slip back into the darkness, knowing he was unwanted and even scorned among those who don't appreciate his diet of bunnies and small dogs.