I roused Jay for his deep sleep, and he and I went out to
see what was going one. We made the
decision to bring the kids in the house and lock the dog door. A valiant effort was made to bring Ms.
Bridget, our free roaming Pygmy goat, in as well. Many cookies were sacrificed try to get her
in the house, but to no avail. If there
was something out there, she was going to have to defend herself. Hey she’s got horns and my dogs don’t.
We live with the rhythm of the seasons around here. In the late summer and fall comes the threat
of the Chupacabra. Now I use this word
as a place holder, because after 10 years of being here we still don’t know
what it is. Something lives in our
woods, something large. So far it has
taken 6 dogs off this property, sometimes in broad daylight. Molly, Angel, Boudreaux, Amie, Sassy and
Precious- the first, have all falling victim to this creature.
In the early years we believed it
to be a Panther also know as a Cougar, Puma, or Mountain Lion. We saw something one night, and when we hit
it with the flash light its eyes turned yellow.
It got scared and ran off. We
asked Fish and Wildlife if it could be a Panther. They laughed at us and told us that it could
not be a Panther that it must be Coyotes.
Louisiana fish and wildlife said at the time, that there were no
Panthers in Louisiana. Despite many
people I know who have either seen one, or heard one, in different places in
Northern Louisiana.
We have a friend who lives up the
road. She used to feed the feral cats in her area. One day she is looking out her back door and
there eating the cat food is a Panther.
Another friend who lives two parishes over had one on her back
porch. A parish south of us, my mom saw
one crossing the field one day. And I
myself have seen them in the wild.
In the late 90’s Mike and I made a trip to Biloxi,
Mississippi. We were on Highway 84 about
dusk just outside of Jena. We were going
through a heavily wooded area, when I yelled at him to stop the car. In front of us passed a magnificent
creature. She was huge! Beautiful!
Oh she must have been 5 or 6 feet long!
She just slowly walked in front of our car, and then turned back to look
at us. All the while Mike screaming at
me, asking why he had to stop the car, he never saw her.
We know there are Coyotes in the
area, as you can sit out on most nights and hear the different packs howl to each
other. I have even been inside my house
and heard them. They begin to move in
the fall or when there is no water in the creek, like now. It’s been a while since it rained here. In the fall we lock the kids in the house at night,
and Bridget too if we can catch her. We
just let them out in the morning and clean up any messes. Hey my kid’s safety comes first.
I have seen Coyotes here as well,
during the drought, oh about 5 years ago.
The kids were going nuts. I
opened the back door and there he was standing in the woods. I ran back in the bed room and grabbed the
9mm. Now I can’t hit the back side of
the barn, but I fired off the whole clip, with my eyes closed. Shells were coming back and hitting me in the
face. Man was I scared! I didn’t hit him. I think the first few shots scared him
off. I saw him one more time. We keep a
kiddy pool full of water, most of the year for Princess to swim in. I saw him come around the corner of the
house. I think he was trying to get a
drink. But by the time I went in the
house to get the gun, and came back out he was gone.
The Coyotes at times have proved
beneficial to us. We had a beautiful
goat names Ostara, a lovely little Nubian with white ears. She was the first goat every born here. She lived a long life here, birthed babies
here and shared with us her milk. In
late March of 2013 she birthed triplets, Odessa, Ophelia, and another girl that
did not live. The birth was rough on her
and she was done by the time I got to her. Later that day she became “downed,
“unable to stand on her own power. Her
gums were white and she was floppy and almost unresponsive. She was bleeding a lot more then she should
have. I began a series of frantic phone
calls to my goat friends. One vet told
me she was bleeding because she had worms.
Idiot! See what I told you about
you are your goat’s best advocate. I finally reached my regular goat vet via
telephone that evening. He told me she
may have, “busted a gut,” aka torn a hole in her intestines while she was
birthing. He told us there was probable
nothing we could do. We brought her and
the babies inside the house. Her
condition continued to worsen over night.
I began bottle feeding the girls.
We knew that if Ostara made it thru the night, she would have to be put
down. That next morning after dawn we
walked her out behind the house. We said
our goodbyes. Jay, in tears, shot her,
and I looked away. It was the kindest
thing we could do for her. We could not
let her continue to suffer.
The rain had begun to fall softly
that night and into that morning. We did
not process her out of respect for the life she had lived here, and all she had
given us. We could not burry her, as the kids would dig
her up. So we placed her on the fire
pit, in the old circle. We did not have
enough wood, and everything was too wet to cremate her, but we tried. A day after she had been placed on the fire
pit, with the rain still falling, Jay went to check on her. Her nose had been chewed on. We knew the coyotes had been there. We knew then we had to let nature take its
course. They were doing their job. That night we locked the kids and Bridget in
the house and let the coyotes do their thing.
I could have been mad at them, but instead I was glad they were there,
giving us a solution to our problem.
I believe in what a lot of George Melendez
Wright had to say.
That unless a predator is threatening livestock or an endangered species
to leave it alone. I would rather have
the coyotes be part of our ecosystem here, then to go out and hunt them. They have a vital job to do in this
world. The Goddess made them for a
specific roll and who am I to question what she has made. Ilsa
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