Songdogs

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Just before I came home to Ireland I saw my first coyotes. They were strung on a fencepost near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. An eruption of brown fur against a field of melting snow, their bodies hanging upside-down, tied to the post with orange twine. Two neat bullet-holes had pierced their flanks where brown merged white. They were foot-dry and rotten with stench. Muzzles and paws hung down in the grass and their mouths were open, as if about to howl.

The hanging was a rancher’s warning to other coyotes to stay away from the field. If they trotted nearby, a paw raised to the chest, an ear cocked to a sound, a tail held in motion, the rancher would bullet them back to where they came from. But coyotes aren’t as foolish as us — they don’t trespass where the dead have been. They move on and sing elsewhere.