Last night, at around 2 in the morning, Dave and I were awakened by very weird howling. It sounded like "A-woooooooo a-wooooooooooo ooooooo-ooooooooooooooooo! AAAAAAAAAAAA-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" There were kind of some moaning/yelping/barking-ish sounds interspersed.
It went on for a few minutes and was truly very peculiar sounding. Dave woke up with a start (a miracle in itself that he could hear it over his snores) and asked what it was. It took a minute to realize that it had a very canine-quality type of sound to it, though quite different from any dog we'd ever heard.
It took Pixie 0.2 seconds to despise the owner of this unfamiliar voice and lose her mind barking and growling hysterically. It sounded like it was very close outside our bedoom window in the greenbelt but when I got up to look, I couldn't see anything. We thought, coyote?
The strange noises stopped after a few minutes. Pixie's response barks stopped after a few hours. Sometimes she would drift to sleep (by my head) and spontaneously wake us both with a fresh volley of warnings to the long-departed beast. Wary and upset with herself for succumbing to exhaustion, she would make small woofing noises under her breath, directed at the window, pacing the bed and occasionally hopping down to sniff importantly under the door, in case the vagrant was attempting to enter from there.
It was not a good night for rest. Except for Dave, whose loud snoring drowned out all else in his ears and kept him sleeping cozily, like a built-in white-noise machine.
I had already forgotten about the whole debacle when I ran across this blurb this morning:
"If your dog wakes you up in the middle of night barking, it might be responding to the coyote mating calls coming from the pastures and fields. It is mating season for these most adaptable animals and a male might follow the female around for days waiting for her to be in the right mood. The pair will stay together until the female gives birth. When feeding pups, coyotes can be particularly attracted to livestock, especially young smaller animals such as sheep. In one study done in King County more than 1/3 of the diet of suburban Coyotes was house cats."
Yeah Pixie, really good idea to want to fight this thing. If there's anything you look like, it's a cat.
It went on for a few minutes and was truly very peculiar sounding. Dave woke up with a start (a miracle in itself that he could hear it over his snores) and asked what it was. It took a minute to realize that it had a very canine-quality type of sound to it, though quite different from any dog we'd ever heard.
It took Pixie 0.2 seconds to despise the owner of this unfamiliar voice and lose her mind barking and growling hysterically. It sounded like it was very close outside our bedoom window in the greenbelt but when I got up to look, I couldn't see anything. We thought, coyote?
The strange noises stopped after a few minutes. Pixie's response barks stopped after a few hours. Sometimes she would drift to sleep (by my head) and spontaneously wake us both with a fresh volley of warnings to the long-departed beast. Wary and upset with herself for succumbing to exhaustion, she would make small woofing noises under her breath, directed at the window, pacing the bed and occasionally hopping down to sniff importantly under the door, in case the vagrant was attempting to enter from there.It was not a good night for rest. Except for Dave, whose loud snoring drowned out all else in his ears and kept him sleeping cozily, like a built-in white-noise machine.
I had already forgotten about the whole debacle when I ran across this blurb this morning:
"If your dog wakes you up in the middle of night barking, it might be responding to the coyote mating calls coming from the pastures and fields. It is mating season for these most adaptable animals and a male might follow the female around for days waiting for her to be in the right mood. The pair will stay together until the female gives birth. When feeding pups, coyotes can be particularly attracted to livestock, especially young smaller animals such as sheep. In one study done in King County more than 1/3 of the diet of suburban Coyotes was house cats."
Yeah Pixie, really good idea to want to fight this thing. If there's anything you look like, it's a cat.
3 comments:
I would like to invite you to my blog. Hope to see you there!
This is a little clue (only for you)!
It is located in downtown and they sell lots of chocolate. The name of the store starts with "Ca".
Um, if you win me, Pixie won't bite me, right?
Wish I got this clue earlier!
Pixie might bite you, but it would be a love bite! And she'd fetch you til the end of time!
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