This morning on the way to the train, I saw a dead coyote on the side of the road. My parents said they can hear them howling at night, but this was really the first time I'd actually seen one. Maybe.
When I was in college, there was a semester where one day I only had a morning class, so I'd spend the afternoon sitting around the house. Everyone else was either at work or school, so I could basically do anything I wanted. And what I wanted was to watch old sitcoms on USA. One day, during a commercial break for The John Larroquette Show, I got up to get a drink and saw something outside. I went over to the window to get a closer look. At the edge of the woods, I saw what looked like a dog, only bigger. It was tall and white and looking right at me. I didn't have a National Audubon Society booklet on me, but I was pretty sure I was looking at a wolf. I wanted to get a closer look, so I got a big stick, because, you know, "Stand back! I've got a stick!" and took off in pursuit.
I never saw it again although my dad says he has, and it wasn't even until a few years later that I started hearing reports of coyotes in the area. Since there are apparently no wolves Massachusetts, I figured it must have been a coyote I saw out there. But when I actually saw the footage of coyotes on the news, they were tiny, with short legs. So I still say it was a wolf. And how weird is it that we even have coyotes? I always just assumed that wolves lived in the woods and coyotes lived in the desert. And since we're hardly in the desert...
Anyway, back to the dead coyote on the side of the road. When I got to work, I told John T. about it. He lives closer to the city, so he wasn't as aware of the growing number of coyotes seen on the South Shore.
"A coyote? How did you know it was a coyote?"
"Well, he was clutching a tiny umbrella."
He laughed, so I thought I'd try it out on John M., the "Bud has donuts" guy.
"Hey, I was telling T. that I saw a dead coyote on the road this morning. He asked how I knew it was a coyote and I said because he had a little umbrella."
"What, is a coyote a type of drink or something?"
As Trinamick would say, great googly-moogly.
So here's a question. If there really was a drink called "the coyote," what would be in it? No Goldschlager allowed.
