Coyote
This morning was beautiful, a sunny and crisp day. We’ve been hiking the Bruce Trail every weekend for a long time, and we were looking forward to a trip to Speyside and parts north, to sections we’d never seen before. We got the usual coffee while engaging in the usual playful banter, looked at the map, and decided which route to the trailhead was best. The trail is moving east on the sections we haven’t hiked yet, so I headed along Dundas Street in that direction. The road opens up immediately and the limit is eighty kilometres per hour. The trip would be fast. As I got to speed, an animal suddenly appeared just to the right and ahead of the car, and I struck it hard.
It happened so very quickly. From the instant I saw the animal until I realized we’d hit it, a second, or less, had passed, but in the strange chronology of the mind, it seemed to take much longer, and so very much happened. While Alex and I were chatting, his head down looking at the map, I suddenly saw a coyote at full gallop less than a metre away from the front end of the car, its path perfectly perpendicular to ours. I saw its yellow-brown fur, and the reticulated pattern on it, like a tiger’s, running down the length of its body. In a microsecond, I saw its eyes, intent on the safe side of the road ahead of it. I thought I could avoid it. My foot came off the gas and hovered for another tiny slice of the second above the break, and I jerked the car to the left, slightly. But there is no median on this high-speed road, and cars were coming toward us. It would do no good. I was going to strike this animal with the full force of my car, speeding at eighty kilometres an hour, and neither I nor the poor coyote would be able to stop it, and so I simply did the only thing possible, and continued along a straight path, and ran into the side of its beautiful, wild body.
I immediately slowed, looking in the rearview mirror. I could see a small piece of the car, but the coyote wasn’t there. I thought by some miracle I had only glanced it, and it had simply run off into the fields to the north. But I suddenly realized it was still under the car, and we were still moving, at maybe fifty kilometres per hour. Just at that instant, there was a loud thud, and, as I pulled onto the shoulder, there it was, about twenty metres behind.
I was stunned. Alex was overcome. A truck pulled off the road ahead of us, and a man got out, pulling on gloves. I rolled down the window, and glanced in the mirror. To my utter horror, the coyote’s head lifted off the road, wobbling. It was still alive. The man came to the window, and said he’d drag it off the road to avoid an accident. Perhaps he didn’t realize it wasn’t dead. For some reason, I said nothing, and got out of the car to see the poor thing lurch up, and hobble, in agony, onto the shoulder, limping as though one of its legs were crushed, or torn off. I felt sick, and Alex was leaning against the roof of the car, his face hidden.
Realizing that the animal was alive, the man told me to call the Humane Society. This I could do. I couldn’t help the coyote. I couldn’t even bring myself to approach it and look at the state it was in, and the immenseness of the suffering it was experiencing and which I caused. But I could call for help. I got back in the car and made the call.
Because of the proximity to Oakville, and the state of the various services in the two cities, it took three phone calls and an exasperating voicemail trap before I spoke to someone. When I hung up, I got out of the car, and watched from a distance while the man, and now two others, crowded around the wounded animal and did what they could.
“I can’t go over there,” Alex said.
“I know.” But I could go, and I had to. There was no helping it, but I should at least look at what had happened. And so I walked slowly toward it, expecting the worst. Nobody looked up as I approached. One of them had put a blanket over its body. It was curled up as though it was ready for a nap, but its head was up, and it was alert, looking at us with its yellow eyes. Its breathing was laboured; it was almost panting for breath. Blood spilled out of its mouth freely, and the foreleg that I could see, poking out from under the blanket, was soaked with it. There was a trail of bright red blood leading right up to where it lay, and I suddenly realized that I was standing in it.
A van appeared, and a woman in uniform got out. The first man was actually handling the coyote’s head, petting it, and she warned him not to touch it. It could, after all, be rabid. But it was not rabid. It was strong and healthy before the impact. The fur was thick at its ears, and its eyes, even now, were bright, alert, beautiful, and wild, even as it struggled to stay alive.
“It’s a good thing it’s winter,” the woman said. “No pups left alone.” So it was female. “Anyone know what happened?” An older man said that someone had hit it and driven off.
“No,” I said, “I’m the one who hit it.”
She got on the phone to the police, and described where we were. Someone wondered why the police were called. The older man suggested it needed to be shot.
For some reason, I thought this woman from the Humane Society would have everything she needed in her van, and would be able to euthanize it immediately. She explained that she would never touch a wild animal so severely injured, and neither would any veterinarian. The only alternative was to shoot it.
“You should all leave,” she said. “You don’t want to be around when it’s shot.”
I simply looked down at it for a second, panting blood, its injuries dramatic. If it wasn’t euthanized, it would simply die in an hour, or two, all the while in some kind of agony I don’t want to imagine. I suppose I looked distraught, because the older man took my arm warmly and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t worry,” he said, “there’s nothing you can do on these roads. And it won’t be much longer.”
And so, as they drifted away, I simply thanked the ones who had stopped, and I thanked the woman from the van, and I went back to the car.
Alex was still upset, his hands mostly covering his face. “Should I take us home?” I asked.
“No, we should go hiking.”
And so we did.
In Speyside, the trail is beautiful and tight, and crowded with fragrant cedars growing from fissures in the ancient rock of the escarpment, split from centuries of ice and rain. It snowed last night. The trail was undisturbed. Snow capped the rocks, and coated each needle on every evergreen. It was quiet, except for the occasional call of a crow, and the crack of wood in the distance.

Nobody had passed the trail here before us — the snow was pristine. The only tracks were those of coyotes, following the natural depression the trail made, moving ahead of us in what appeared to be a gallop; two animals, traveling side by side and marking the snow on our beloved Bruce Trail, hunting rabbits, or simply running freely through the forest. We followed for a while, and once, we missed the marked path and had to double back.
I loved the impression of those tracks. Here, they galloped, and here, they slowed, walking close together. They traveled along the path for what seemed like a long way. I could follow them all day. But soon, the tracks left the main trail and headed off into the trees, and disappeared from sight.
I decided to walk to Nordfriedhof, the large cemetery well north of my hotel and the city centre, and unknown to me at the time, bounded immediately on the east by the Englischer Garten, which I had failed to visit. I suppose it might be considered dark and ghoulish, but I have always loved the peaceful gardens of cemeteries. This one was long and dark, and filled with large mossy monuments, and crosses tilted in shadow against the afternoon light near the perimeter walls. It is a relatively new cemetery, having been built in the nineteenth century, but it seems oppressively old. I didn’t see any names I recognized. Apparently Traudl Junge is buried there, and Paul Troost. I took many sombre pictures. The camera had difficulty registering any light beneath the trees.
When we reach Port Rowan, it’s a further twenty or so minutes on the road leading along the forty kilometre spit toward Long Point. The weather still holds, the air is still hot and beautiful. There are lots of cars around, and as we get near the park, it seems it will be a crowded day in there. But not where we’ll be.
Some time passes, and it’s hot. We take up the frisbee and go out into the lake, and toss it back and forth for almost two hours. It’s the most fun we’ve had. We both lunge as it flies overhead, or to the left or right. You can do this much better in the water, because there’s no danger of a hard fall to the ground. It’s great stretching out into the sky to reach as it flies past, then crashing into the water — either with the disc in hand, or not. The waves sometimes add to the push of water from the lunge, and many times it rolls over my head, or up against my face. I’ve got my hat on, and Alex laughs at the sight. Water pours over the bill in front of my face.
It’s true, this bit of vandalizing was misplaced and stupid. I couldn’t work out why this quote seemed apropos to this particular god-believer. The scenery around it was certainly pretty, and the wooden railing would surely have been the only workable surface his black ball-point pen could tolerate for many kilometres around, but why that quote? Oh well, believers are not necessarily known for connecting their sentiments to their faith in a way that makes sense to the rest of us.
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