Snow and Coyotes
And, no, the first part of that subject line doesn't even have anything to do with the RHCP song! Amazing!
Overnight last night we got eight inches of snow, at the rate of an inch an hour. School was delayed by two hours, which, is always a major pain in the ass, even more so than just canceling it. Brent has been so fantastic in doing nearly all things kid-related since I've been so sick, though, so that didn't affect me so much.
I was up the whole night until about five AM. I just couldn't sleep. I hurt like hell and I didn't take the meds I normally do and before I knew it, it was too late to do so, so I watched many things happen over the night.
I watched probably eight cars and trucks give up and turn around on the street and head back down the hill when they couldn't make it up the hill.
I watched many vehicles slide and/or careen toward our fence.
I got to see a total of eight, almost certainly drunken, college students out on the street laughing and carrying on thinking tying a tiny rope to the front of a stuck car and then to the back of a truck and having the truck drive as fast as it could up the hill before all said drunken students were safely out of the way would free the stuck car. It didn't work. The rope broke, the truck nearly crashed into our fence, I nearly called the cops, and then it was good times to be had by all as two of the drunk girls laughed and yelled and laughed and snapped pics with their camera phone as their drunken cohorts tried to push the car UP the slippery, un-plowed, un-salted road. Finally, the drunk guys left, running up the street to the truck, yelling and screaming themselves (how they all fit in, I have no idea) and the drunk girls got into their car, put it in reverse and drove backwards down the hill.
Have I ever mentioned drunk people annoy the shit out of me?
At one point I was trying to see if the new camera had night vision on it or, at the very least if I could get a shot of how much snow was coming using the streetlight. I stepped out onto the front steps and looked toward the streetlight and there's a freakin' coyote standing in the middle of the street, just standing there like it's sort of wondering where it should go and what it should do next. I was stunned. We live right in town on the main street entering the west side of the city. The HELL? However, we do have a prairie/wetland preserve within sight of our property, and lots of wooded areas around. I've always seen coyotes in open areas, and I've seen a shitload of them, including on just this summer on our way out to Brent's parents' place, but they're in the country. I picked up the camera, but then a car drove up and I got distracted, knew it was never going to show anything but a black mass, if that, especially considering my tremor, so I ditched the camera and watched the coyote and the car.
The people in the car must have been completely weirded out, for lack of a better term. Here they are, snow coming down an inch an hour, trying to get up a hill, a sheet of ice under the un-plowed four inches of snow or so at that time, they think they might make it up the hill. It's going well, then....DAMMIT! A fucking coyote? In West Mankato? Honey, do you see this? Are you seeing this? Oh, you've got to be fucking KIDDING me! What, is this some sort of sign or something? Goddamn coyote! What? What? You're just going to stare at me? Well, now we're never making it up the hill, thank you very much, fucking trickster. Oh, yeah, just run off now, why don't you!
And that's just what the coyote did. The car came up, was forced to stop maybe a three from it d/t the road conditions and visibility. The coyote acted completely nonchalant. For a moment it just stood there in profile and in the car's headlights, I was able to positively ID it, then it slowly turned so its head was facing the car. It stood there and stared for a few seconds. I was mesmerized. Then it suddenly turned in the direction it had been facing and ran into the over-flow parking lot for the high school.
The car, an SUV, did make it up the hill.
After getting over my initial excitement that we have coyotes living so close to us right in town, I wondered if, perhaps, some of the times our beagles have been baying at very strange times at night, if they have heard or smelled or seen a coyote.
I know I heard them howling all the time out at my in-laws (coyotes, not our beagles.)
Overnight last night we got eight inches of snow, at the rate of an inch an hour. School was delayed by two hours, which, is always a major pain in the ass, even more so than just canceling it. Brent has been so fantastic in doing nearly all things kid-related since I've been so sick, though, so that didn't affect me so much.
I was up the whole night until about five AM. I just couldn't sleep. I hurt like hell and I didn't take the meds I normally do and before I knew it, it was too late to do so, so I watched many things happen over the night.
I watched probably eight cars and trucks give up and turn around on the street and head back down the hill when they couldn't make it up the hill.
I watched many vehicles slide and/or careen toward our fence.
I got to see a total of eight, almost certainly drunken, college students out on the street laughing and carrying on thinking tying a tiny rope to the front of a stuck car and then to the back of a truck and having the truck drive as fast as it could up the hill before all said drunken students were safely out of the way would free the stuck car. It didn't work. The rope broke, the truck nearly crashed into our fence, I nearly called the cops, and then it was good times to be had by all as two of the drunk girls laughed and yelled and laughed and snapped pics with their camera phone as their drunken cohorts tried to push the car UP the slippery, un-plowed, un-salted road. Finally, the drunk guys left, running up the street to the truck, yelling and screaming themselves (how they all fit in, I have no idea) and the drunk girls got into their car, put it in reverse and drove backwards down the hill.
Have I ever mentioned drunk people annoy the shit out of me?
At one point I was trying to see if the new camera had night vision on it or, at the very least if I could get a shot of how much snow was coming using the streetlight. I stepped out onto the front steps and looked toward the streetlight and there's a freakin' coyote standing in the middle of the street, just standing there like it's sort of wondering where it should go and what it should do next. I was stunned. We live right in town on the main street entering the west side of the city. The HELL? However, we do have a prairie/wetland preserve within sight of our property, and lots of wooded areas around. I've always seen coyotes in open areas, and I've seen a shitload of them, including on just this summer on our way out to Brent's parents' place, but they're in the country. I picked up the camera, but then a car drove up and I got distracted, knew it was never going to show anything but a black mass, if that, especially considering my tremor, so I ditched the camera and watched the coyote and the car.
The people in the car must have been completely weirded out, for lack of a better term. Here they are, snow coming down an inch an hour, trying to get up a hill, a sheet of ice under the un-plowed four inches of snow or so at that time, they think they might make it up the hill. It's going well, then....DAMMIT! A fucking coyote? In West Mankato? Honey, do you see this? Are you seeing this? Oh, you've got to be fucking KIDDING me! What, is this some sort of sign or something? Goddamn coyote! What? What? You're just going to stare at me? Well, now we're never making it up the hill, thank you very much, fucking trickster. Oh, yeah, just run off now, why don't you!
And that's just what the coyote did. The car came up, was forced to stop maybe a three from it d/t the road conditions and visibility. The coyote acted completely nonchalant. For a moment it just stood there in profile and in the car's headlights, I was able to positively ID it, then it slowly turned so its head was facing the car. It stood there and stared for a few seconds. I was mesmerized. Then it suddenly turned in the direction it had been facing and ran into the over-flow parking lot for the high school.
The car, an SUV, did make it up the hill.
After getting over my initial excitement that we have coyotes living so close to us right in town, I wondered if, perhaps, some of the times our beagles have been baying at very strange times at night, if they have heard or smelled or seen a coyote.
I know I heard them howling all the time out at my in-laws (coyotes, not our beagles.)