Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light
Rosenblog

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Book Plugs:

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money. I think.
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9/13/2004 -  9/14/2004
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Monday, September 13, 2004
02:01 - Life on the urban frontier	(top)
I just witnessed the freakiest thing I think I've ever seen in the hallowed halls of suburbia. About fifteen minutes ago, sitting in my comfy upstairs chair watching Lupin the Third, I heard outside my window a sudden flurry of caterwauling and rustling leaves. It sounded like a typical cat fight, coming from the hedges and brush at the far side of the house on our right at the end of the cul-de-sac; and I was about to dismiss it as such... except that the yowling and the tumbling in the dry leaves lasted for nearly half a minute, sounding particularly strained and earnest. When it died out, it did so quickly, as though a bag had suddenly been thrown over the participants. And, as I realized a few moments later, there had only been one cat's voice in the fracas. An unsettling thought therefore ran through my mind on spindly legs, but I hustled it out and went back to the TV-watching. Cat fights can be weird, I thought. Then, a moment later, Capri came into my room, making those little whimpery noises he makes when he wants a walk�or, more generically, when he'd like to go outside please. So I pulled on some shoes and went downstairs with him, put on his collar, and we headed out the front door. Capri tugged forward immediately, and I could immediately see why: right in front of me, about forty feet away, a taut, loping, canine shape, about knee-high with tall pointy ears, trotted out from behind the car parked at the sidewalk on the right, looked at me, and then glided briskly leftward across my field of vision and then away from me down the road. And it was followed immediately by three others, each emerging from some nook between cars... and one carrying something heavy and limp and, well... cat-shaped. Coyotes. Four of them. Hunting in a pack... in my cul-de-sac, right outside my window. And they just made off with one of our next-door neighbors' cats! I've heard coyotes yelping and howling in the ravine behind the power station down where I walk Capri, late at night; I've known they come within vocal range of my bedroom window, but I'd never known they'd become so brazen as to take the hunt right down the middle of a suburban cul-de-sac. Apparently the local coyotes have begun to evolve into the ecological niche vacated by wolves, and now hunt in packs very similar to their larger cousins; their quarry is necessarily smaller, but a cat is quite a prize, especially for something as small as a coyote. I tried running after the hunting party as they paused at the end of the cul-de-sac, where it opens onto the major avenue; they stood there, seemingly unconcerned, surveying the situation, and knowing I couldn't follow them because Capri was far more interested in sniffing the ground where they'd left their various calling cards than in giving chase. (Probably just as well.) But I likewise couldn't drag him back inside so I could grab a Mag-lite and go running after them; so I had to just let him finish satisfying his olfactory curiosity, myself watching passively as the coyotes turned and vanished into the night, and then took Capri back inside the house where he lay down seemingly exhausted from the night's sleuthing. I grabbed the flashlight and ran out in the direction where I was pretty sure the coyotes had gone�left turn at the avenue, down to the vacant lot that abuts the wooded ravine with Guadalupe Creek at the bottom�but the trail was long cold. Again, it's probably just as well. Our neighbors are going to have an unpleasant surprise tomorrow morning; I guess it's up to Lance to tell the story. But it's something to have witnessed it first-hand, lemme tell you.