In the hayfield yesterday I scared up two coyote pups, not quite full grown, maybe 3/4 size, and probably whelps from the same litter. They showed entirely different personalities and entertained me as I watched from my tractor seat. One was wary and ran way ahead to disappear over a grassy knoll top. The other pup at first showed interest in me and my machinery, but that soon turned to aloofness and disdain. Unfortunately, I came to the end of the field and the show ended when I had to turn away. He had stopped loping along to yawn and begin looking at something else. A distance of only 20 feet or so separated us when we were nearest each other.
A large hawk sailed and swooped to the ground in that secluded field. He'd hover and watch for field mice that my rake exposed beneath the two swaths I pulled together into one large, fluffed windrow. It reminded me of the times I plowed ground under a canopy of seagulls that followed me from one end of the field to the other to dive and peck away at the worms and grubs I turned up.
A solitary person driving a shiny yellow pickup pulling a long, silver stock trailer drove past on the dirt road. I recognized him as the rodeo contractor who furnishes bucking bulls for national bullarama events, his family being the owners of the champion Little Yellow Jacket. I knew they had a pasture near the hayfield where I worked and that he would be one of a very few people who had business here.
It is always refreshing to get away from the city and everything we call civilization and escape to this wild world where few humans disturb it, where wild creatures are at home, and when, after I leave it, their world resumes as before.
