BLAH

Winter is blah! I am, surprisingly, not very cold or bothered by the snow, I'm just sick of the lack of sun. And the fact that my horse looks like a yak, so I have to be really careful to not let her work too hard and get too sweaty. And I can't see the trails, so neither can she, so we have to go extra slow lest she step off a ledge and break her leg. It makes for some boring midday rides.

But the wildlife has been spectacular. When you last heard from us, we'd just seen yeti. Since then, I've seen coyotes three separate times!

Right before Christmas, I went out with S and the dogs, and she spotted a coyote on a hill about 30' above us. The horses never saw it, and the dogs never saw it, and eventually we moved on and left it to look for rabbits. Then right after Christmas, we were riding down in the canyon and I spotted the remains of a peacock. Somebody in her neighborhood had a nice young peacock, but a coyote snatched it and ran down in the canyon to eat it. Nothing left but wing feathers and a few tail feathers. As I was driving down the hill back to the highway that day, a coyote ran across the road a little in front of me.

Then yesterday I went out alone with Dixie and Cersei, and ALL of us saw TWO coyotes. Dixie and I were coming up on a fork in the trail, where if we went left we'd go out further and if we went right we'd go home sooner, and we were gearing up to have a big disagreement about which way to turn, when she stopped dead in her tracks and stared straight ahead. I looked too, and saw a big coyote with a cottontail in its mouth. It looked at us for a while, then looked to my left, so I looked to the left and saw (presumably) its mate. The one on the left was smaller, so I'll call that one the female. She stopped for a while and looked at all of us, then circled around to stay about 50' away and rejoined her mate. Cersei, bless her heart, had been snuffling around in the snow, completely oblivious to everything, but she finally noticed them. She puffed up like a hedgehog and started jumping up and down, stiff-legged, barking at them. She started to run over to investigate them, but I called her back and she came. (Of course she came - she really is a remarkably good dog.) Everybody watched everybody else for a bit, then I turned Dixie to the right and we left them alone.

I'd been planning on going left and doing the Mines trail, but I kind of wanted to leave the coyotes to eat their rabbit in peace. I am a softie, I know. :)

Weather permitting, I have a big weekend planned, but I have moments of being totally superstitious and I don't want to jinx it by talking about it!