Coyote Yipps

I’ve lost a variety of things while out and about in the parks — mostly items of clothing. My things tend to be earth toned, which doesn’t help when trying to locate them, but I seem to have found almost everything that went missing — they usually reappeared just lying on the ground where I inadvertently had dropped them.

marking a “foreign object” which happened to be my lost handkerchief

I found a brown coat within three weeks, a little faded from being in the sun but otherwise in good shape, to my surprise. Caps have turned up within a week of being lost; a scarf turned up two days later — it had been folded and put aside by a friend. And I always manage to find my lost handkerchiefs — one with the aid of a coyote who “pointed it out” to me when she decided to “mark” it!

And then there was the cap which I never did find. It disappeared a year ago. I had long since given up any hope of finding it — I had searched for it for weeks with no luck. It is the only object which I had permanently lost, I thought.

Then, yesterday I was taking photos at dawn of two coyotes playing “keep away”. I was focusing in on the exciting game the coyotes were playing, so I didn’t really notice the object inspiring their play until well into the game.

What was that limp “toy” they were playing with? As they played, the lost cap slowly came to mind as a far-fetched possibiliy. Hadn’t I lost it in this exact same vicinity? I made a note to myself to check it out when there were no coyotes around. So, later that day I returned, and, sure enough it was my cap! Should I take it with me or should I leave it for the coyotes? I decided to take it home — it would have just been trash in the park — where I washed it thoroughly several times and put it on! It had been my favorite cap.

But now I have another worry: What if the coyotes recognize it on my head and want it back?  Of course they won’t, but the thought did occur to me!

playing keep away with a found object