Fauna (38 page)

Coyote Cop’s Blog

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Nothing wrong with taking a trophy. A man ought to take pride in a job well done and anyway it helps to have a reminder of what the fight is all about. Because a coyote is not a feeling in somebodys guts or anywhere else. Its a flesh and blood menace. Its a predator. And when it comes for you it comes on four grey paws. I don’t mind admitting that scares me. It should scare you too.

A couple of you wrote saying you didn’t know where to find cyanide canisters. I’ll post a link down the bottom of this entry but in the meantime I bet you know where to get your hands on some gasoline. Like I said you want to be on the lookout for den activity this time of year. I know some of you have already found promising looking holes. Well here too the trick is to watch and wait. Bring some binoculars if you have them. If you get too close to a den before your ready to make your move the mother will get wind and cart the pups off somewhere else. Watch the main entrance but also keep an eye out for a possible back door. There won’t be any sign of digging there. Chances are the only way you’ll spot it is if you see one of them dive nose first into the ground.
If the den is active you ought to see pups this time of year though they won’t be straying very far from home. One or both of the parents will be out hunting during the twilight hours so midday and the dead of night are your best bets for finding most of the family at home. Of course in the city you will want to go about your business in the dark.

First if you are lucky enough to know where that back door is block it up. Bring something to cover the main entrance too. Old car wheels work great or even shopping carts. Try looking in the river around the bridges where people like to chuck stuff in. The riverdale footbridge is a good one. Its pretty shallow and stuff gets snagged along the bank. Lots of times its only a tire but if you get lucky like me you might just fish out the whole damn wheel. Whatever you use you will want to stash it in some nearby cover so when you need it its close to hand. The rest is just common sense. You have the gasoline and you have the matches. You pour. You light. When the flames die back enough so you won’t burn off your eyebrows you roll your wheel into place. If your the type that gets nervous you might want to make tracks and thats just fine. What matters is getting the job done. Or maybe your more like me and you want a little something to remember your successes by. But who wants to crawl face first down a skinny smoky hole and what are the chances theres anything worth keeping down
there anyway? It probably looks like chicken and ribs closed up in the barbecue on high. Besides as you can see theres more than one way to take a trophy. Just roll that big old wheel away and remember to use your flash.

POSTED BY Coyote Cop at 6:04 AM

In the office of Howell Auto Wreckers, Stephen sits rigid in the old swivel chair. No sound save the rumble of the parkway, the hum of the computer’s fan. The photo floats on the screen before him. At first it appeared celestial, the blacker-than-black circle wearing its halo of eerie light. Now he sees it for what it is—something much, much closer to home.

soldierboy wrote …

I don’t know how long I’ve been looking at this picture. Long enough to forget the room I’m sitting in and find myself down there in that burnt-out hole. Not now, when it’s all over, but then, when the gas came splashing and the den filled up with fire.

Of course, I’m not there. Still, for a while my heart was beating so hard I thought I might die from the sheer terror of it. Can you imagine what it must have been like for the creatures who were down there in the flesh? Because I think you should. I think we all should. And I’m not sure what’s wrong with us that we don’t.

There’s a switch inside every one of us that I guess grew there as a necessary part of survival. How can you drag a fish up out of the river for your supper if you feel the yank of the hook in your own cheek? I get that part. We can’t feel for everyone and everything all the time. We’d die of fear or sorrow a hundred times a day. The thing is, it’s gotten so we flick that switch off like it’s nothing. And, more often than not, we forget to turn it back on.

So I’m asking you, Coyote Cop and everyone else reading this, put yourself down in that den. Bunch yourself up against the back wall with your brothers and sisters. Feel what happens in your chest when the air turns to poison. Then to flame.

Now look at the photograph again.

POSTED AT 8:19 AM, June 1, 2008

Chin is a demon with a cleaver. At the moment he’s dismantling chickens, reducing featherless bodies to their elements—bone-white, breast-pink, blood-red. In the lull between bus pans, Lily comes to stand beside him, watching his old hands fly.

“What you doing, no-name-girl?”

“What’s it look like? I’m watching you chop.”

“Huh.” He brings the cleaver down, splitting a thin bird in two.

“Looks easy when you do it.”

“Easy. You think easy?”

“No, I think it’s hard.”

“Huh.” He angles the blade, dividing a breast from its fan of bones. “Maybe I teach you sometime.”

“Teach me?” The possibility never occurred to her. She’s never even touched one of his cleavers. He cleans and sharpens them himself.

“If you sticking round.” He glances at her. “You sticking round?”

The rinse cycle clunks to a halt. Ping, the teenage prep cook, is out back smoking, mumbling to Billy in Cantonese. Lily can almost hear the cups inside the dishwasher giving off steam. Her marked-up arms, normally so heavy, feel strangely light, almost papery, inside her sleeves. The butterfly knife, on the other hand, remains leaden. She can feel it in her jeans pocket, dragging that side of her down.

Slipping a hand up under her apron, she digs it out and sets it on the counter. Chin lays the cleaver aside and wipes his chickeny hands on a rag. He takes up the knife, opens it. Tests the blade against his thumb. “Tch.”

“Would you—” She pauses to steady her voice. “Could you sharpen it for me?”

“That depend.” He looks up. “What it for?”

She meets his gaze. “Protection.”

“Protection.” He nods. “Okay, sure.”

Stephen’s made another of his standbys—red lentil soup with chunks of potato, the onions sautéed with cumin and added
last thing. Armpit stew, Lily called it when he cooked up a pot a couple of weeks ago, but he noticed she went back for a second bowl.

She makes no comment tonight, setting the table in silence before walking around back with Billy to smoke.

Kate shows up as he’s tossing the salad. He looks round to see her standing awkwardly, just inside the door. “Guy said I could stay for supper.” Something forced in her tone. “Anything I can do?”

“You could put out the butter, and some of those rolls.”

“Okay.” She heads for the bathroom. “I’ll just wash my hands.”

Guy comes in next, engine grease to his elbows. He crosses to the sink and squirts dish soap into his palm.

“You get that pump out all right?” Stephen asks.

“Yep.”

“Any sign of Edal?”

He lathers up carefully. “Nope.”

Stephen’s deciding whether he should say more when Lily steps back inside. A moment later Kate appears, towel in hand. “Hi, Lily.”

“Oh. Hi.”

Kate pats her thigh, but Billy needs no encouragement. “Hi, Billy.”

“Don’t be a suck, Billy,” Lily says sharply. “Come here. Come.”

At the table, Guy stares down at his helping. Kate watches Lily; Lily keeps her eyes on her dog.

“So,” Stephen hears himself say brightly, “how was everybody’s day?”

“Good,” says Guy.

Kate echoes him. “Good.”

Lily says nothing, spooning up a mouthful of soup. Stephen hasn’t seen her this prickly in weeks—not since she first started showing up at the yard.

“How was work, Lily?” he says.

She shoots him an unpleasant look.

“You have a job?” says Kate.

“Yes, I have a job. Why is that so fucking hard for anybody to believe?”

“Sorry, I just—sorry.” Kate lays down her spoon. “Where do you work?”

“Coal mine,” Lily mumbles, her mouth full.

Kate blinks. “Pardon?”

“Oil rig.”

“Lily, if you don’t want to tell me—”

“Slaughterhouse.” Lily reaches for a roll and tears it in two.

Not much point trying to make conversation after that. Stephen focuses on his food—yellow soup, green salad, brown roll. Nobody takes him up on an offer of seconds. Lily clears, Kate washes, Guy dries. They could be hooded brothers at a monastery, not a word shared between them as they work.

Stephen lingers at the table, nursing a second glass of milk. No one seems much in the mood for a story, so he’s surprised when Guy fetches the book from his bedroom and the other two resume their seats.

For the first page or so, Guy’s delivery is uncharacteristically dull. Only when a cry sounds throughout the jungle—the terrible
Pheeal
that tells of
some big killing afoot
—does he begin to do justice to the words. Stephen feels his head grow
heavy with dread. The Red Dogs are coming, the monstrous, one-minded pack known as the dhole.

To defeat them, Mowgli will require an intelligence older and more supple than his own. He will require the python, Kaa.

The snake is a tactical thinker with years of experience in the field. The mission he comes up with is risky; as Mowgli puts it, “It is to pull the very whiskers of Death.” While Kaa waits in the river below, Mowgli will lead the dhole over the high marble cliffs. Caves are dangerous places, and the cliffs are laced with them. Dripping with dark honey, they’re home to the killer hives.

The table is hard, unyielding against Stephen’s brow. He knows the man-cub will land unscathed in the water below, just as he knows the dhole will drop through the wakening swarm to the death of a thousand stings. Worst of all, he knows the long fall to the river will be only the beginning. Bees may be smarter than any bullet, but there’s no way they’ll neutralize every insurgent. There are always those who make it through.

Downriver, Mowgli and the wolves take on what’s left of the ravening horde. Guy reads the pages-long battle like a pro, calling up all the dumb lust and horror, the sorrow and the sickening glee.

It’s a happy ending of sorts: the dhole are vanquished, victory to the man-cub and his wounded pack. As with every chapter, though, the true conclusion comes in the shape of a song. This one belongs to Chil the Kite, winged scavenger that waits for them all. Guy reads it plainly—no lilting tone, no relentless, thudding hand. “‘Tattered flank and sunken
eye, open mouth and red, / Locked and lank and lone they lie, the dead upon their dead.’”

When it’s over, Stephen lifts his head—lighter now, almost weightless. Lily rises before Guy can even close the book. She slips outside without a word, Billy sticking close, as though she’s sewn him to the flesh of her thigh. Kate looks up sharply at the muted clang of the gate. Her expression is painful to behold, so Stephen turns to Guy—only to find he too looks as though someone has died.