“Coyotes can run up to 40 mph. That’s fast enough to catch a dog. They can jump long distances of up to 13 feet, which adds to their agility as great hunters…they can swim.”–

— Rangerplanet.com

When you holler out “pretty bird” in the quiet of the evening and you don’t hear the sound of a quack come wafting back across the water, you can bet something is going on. There has been the occasion when a duck had its head underwater foraging for what ducks forage for. Those are the times when the duck won’t quack back. But if you holler pretty bird long and loud enough the duck will hear, respond and paddle its way back to the dock where it can expect its nightly supper of chopped corn.

Both ducks, Hilda and Helen, have injured feet. They swim like a fish but walking can be a little tricky. These injuries are attributed mostly to turtle bites. Hilda’s feet are so pigeon toed they lap over one another. Helen showed up one day with an injured leg hanging limp. There’s no way a duck can walk on one foot. I made accommodations for her feedings. She managed to swim quite well with one foot paddling and one hanging. Day after day sometimes using her wing as a prop she would waddle along. In time the injury healed and she could walk. It was a miracle. Hilda walked so slow on her overlapping feet often I would pick her up holding my hands around her body. She would lift her wings out stretched in front of me so that I felt like a passenger in flight.   

The evening came when Helen came for her feeding but Hilda did not; she did not come the next day nor the next. Hilda had simply vanished — a hawk, an owl, an eagle, a coyote. It happens in the Prairie more than we’d like. Whatever took Hilda would eventually come for Helen. It’s not easy being injured and surviving Prairie life.

I spent more time with Helen, trying to make up for the loss of her sibling. I sat on the dock while she ate. Now she comes closer to my knees, even once laying her sweet head on my lap. When she finishes eating, she’ll make her way back out on the water, and I’ll leave knowing she’ll be safe. One day while she ate at my feet my eyes scanned the field and there he was. The coyote stood tall; his reddish coat shone in the evening sun. His head held high. He was looking away. I glanced back between me and the house and saw Wilhelmina, the cat, lying in the shade under the trees oblivious. I was between the duck and the cat, both prey to the coyote.

I stood with all the purpose I could muster and started toward the coyote. He watched. Then with a loud and guttural voice I hollered not “pretty bird” but “You better get out of here!” The coyote turned and ran across the field and into the woods.

Sam later suggested I not approach a wild coyote. He could be rabid. With that Sam pulled out his .30-06 and sited it in for another day.

Shannon Bardwell is a writer living quietly in the Prairie. Email reaches her at [email protected].

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