A Small Furry Prayer (25 page)
It was a long trudge out of the badlands. Having to hike out of the backcountry to go euthanize a dog and turn around and come back to hunt another is the kind of heartbreak only animals can provide. But I also knew it wasn't going to kill me. I was having a crap day, but that was about where it would end. Animal rescue might be a game of death, but isn't everything? Tomorrow I would wake up and try to save some more dogs regardless, and the day after that as well. Joy was rightâthis is what we did. So yeah, if dog rescue was a cult, then I was now a full-fledged member,
And right about the time I realized that, I spotted Poppycock. She was hovering right at the edge of the badlands, standing beside a juniper bush, acting the way dogs act when they've just buried a boneâlike there was something to hide. The other dogs weren't paying too much attention, but there was a tingle down my spine and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I took about ten steps forward and glanced behind the bush and my jaw dropped open. Sitting there, sitting less than ten feet from me, was the coyote,
that
coyote, the coyote in Coyote's Line.
In person, not separated by a canyon, he was enormous, well over a hundred pounds. His face wide, his shoulders broad, his coat two-toned, the top layer a thick gray shag, beneath it a thinner tan. He was glorious, yet off somehow. He looked like a hybrid, like a dog, wolf, and coyote all rolled into one. He looked like the standard-bearer for the entire canid line. And we got a good look because he wasn't running away, in fact didn't even appear afraid of us. Instead, his face broke into a giant grin and he sat straight up, positioning his torso directly over his hind legs and thenâI shit you notâhe started hopping on those hind legs, hopping just like a kangaroo.
It was among the oddest things I'd ever seen an animal do. I didn't know how to react, so stood there gaping. The coyote hopped a wide half-moon across the desert, his great jaws hanging open, his tongue flopping, his toes tapping. Later Alan Beck, head of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University, explained that hopping is what coyotes often do instead of bowing. It's how they initiate play. Then the coyote stopped hopping.
When he stopped, we were all standing in a long line: the coyote at one end, Igor at the other. He'd stopped a few feet from Poppycock but ignored her and started walking toward me. He passed me and then Bella and Bucket, and halted in front of Igor. They stood a few inches apart for what seemed like an eternity. Then he leaned in close and rubbed his head against Igor's neckâthe same adopting-into-the-pack gesture I'd seen in wolves. They stood together for about twenty seconds and then, with some silent signal I never detected, the ceremony ended. In three quick lopes, the coyote was gone, vanishing in the distance, melting into the landscape, becoming, as I soon discovered, another backcountry apparition, another story no one quite believes, yet no one entirely doubts.
Trickster, shape-shifter, and transformer is how most cultures view the coyote. He is the keeper of magic, the bringer of death, the gateway to renewal. His presence, according to many, carries with it specific lessons. Ted Andrews explains, “The coyote teaches the balance of wisdom and folly and how both go hand in hand. The image of the wise fool has been used in the lore of many societies. This is the individual who seems to be a simpleton and yet the words and actions have a much greater wisdom than is initially recognized. Are you not seeing the wisdom of your life and its events? The coyote will help you.”
I needed the help. Igor was dead within the hour. Joy made it through okay, I took a couple extra days to get right again, but Bucket, well, he hasn't been the same since. All things, as they say, are connectedâbut that doesn't make them any easier. Or any more comprehensible. Mirror neurons might explain unity, flow states might explain shape-shifting, but neither is much help with land spirits. Neither kept Igor alive. As for the coyote, well, that's going to have to be tomorrow's mystery. But if the past is any way to judge the future, eventually something will help solve that puzzle. And there will be another puzzle beneath it, because there always is another, because the great gift of the natural world is that of mystery.
Perhaps with enough “solutions” we'll rethink our relationship with the animal kingdom. Perhaps it'll happen sooner. Eventually our morality and our technology will catch our problem. We no longer believe the Bible when it tells us stoning children to death at the city gates is a good way to punish rebellion, just as we no longer believe a few other tales. Our need for inegalitarian ecology has lessened as well. Within a few years, researchers tell us, we will be placating carnivores with meat grown from stem cells. Materials science can now weather the elements far better than hide and hair, artificial skin needs only a legislative push to put cosmetic-testing bunnies out of business, and we are a truce with the breeding clubs away from national spay-and-neuter lawsâthe universally accepted first step for transitioning to no-kill dog sheltering. But do we really need to wait?
Not too long ago, scientists and philosophers examined the facts and could not find reason why our closest biological relatives did not deserve legal rights, so a Spanish court granted them to great apes. A Swiss law now protects the “dignity” of all organisms. And no matter where you look nor whose testimony you hear, you'll find none who have hunted the meaning of life in the world of animals and returned wanting. This alone should pique our curiosity. Many argue that our inability to consider animal welfare from an alternative perspective is for failure of will and weakness of vanity, though I see this cross as a lack of imagination. The shamans speak of a time when humans and animals could speak the same language. I don't know if we could ever find it again, but considering everything I've seen along the way, I would certainly like to look.
Perhaps the best way out of this dilemma is to again to check the scorecard. In her 1792
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft felt it necessary to remind us, “If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of woman, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test.” This is timely since the last election saw a woman run for president of the United States and end up as secretary of state. She replaced an African American woman who not long ago was considered unfit for office, being wrong in both sex and skin color. Two centuries ago her people were leashed and caged and factory-farmed; today Barack Hussein Obama is our president. I don't know what happens if we begin to treat dogs as our partners. I only know what the scorecard saysâthat every other time we've tried equality the results have been spectacular.
