I recently hosted an episode of Wild Kingdom here in my quiet Seattle residential neighborhood. Coyotes live in Carkeek Park, a wildish, greenbelt a mile from my house. They have, in the past, drifted up from the park to terrorize the neighborhood for a night or two. The alarm goes out, we keep our cats and small animals inside and then the threat slithers back to Carkeek.

The coyotes have gotten quite bold in the past year. They routinely trot down the middle of the street like private citizens. My neighbor’s small cat (in a face-off with a coyote, my money would be on Suli) sits in her gate and observes their coming and going.

My own cat is more cautious; she’s also older and more fragile. One morning she stuck her head out the sunroom door, backed up, ran into the bathroom, jumped in the tub and made a sound I have never heard from her. In my garden a coyote was strolling around, assessing the real estate.

I chased him out. This is not a sustainable thing to do with a coyote. They are like street punks –or cats, actually. They retreat a few feet, turn around and give me a look that says, “Oh yeah? Make me.” I grabbed something I could wave around, a broom, and chased it like a madwoman, yelling “No, no!” It slipped through the fence. That was it for an hour or two. Then it was back. I chased it four times that day.

The next day, Artemis (my cat) was still sniffing tentatively and backing up from the door. The coyote came through with a dis-emboweled squirrel hanging out of its mouth. I got a pang because there is one squirrel—Smudgie–who will eat out of my hand and I hoped Smudgie wasn’t the one now in the coyote’s mouth. The coyote dropped the corpse and ran when I chased him but he came back several times to finish his meal. Last I looked there was a part of a squirrel behind the raspberries. I left it in hopes the crows would clean it up. To date, I am afraid to go behind the raspberries.

The next afternoon I was reading in my front room when a faint siren sounded in the distance followed by a blood-curdling scream that sounded like it was coming from the chair next to me. I leaped up and looked outside. The coyote was sitting in my raspberries right outside the window, responding to the siren. They do that. The sirens set them off. They are like nerve pain. There’s a twitch in one part of the body and then a whole party starts up in another part. I chased him out yet again.

I went next door to talk to the guys in the cemetery. (Not the dead ones—I don’t discuss current events with them—but the caretakers.) As we chatted on the road, a coyote came waltzing by. This was a different one than the one attempting a coup on my garden. My nemesis was light tan and short-haired. This new one was gray and white with a fluffy tail like a malamute or a collie. The guys said they had seen two pups. We mused over where they had their den and why they were still around after five days. There’s not much cover in the cemetery. We compared our brief notes on Animal Control: they won’t do anything.

The next morning, I went out to feed the birds and what my father used to call the “shy, wild things.” (Yes, I know I am not supposed to feed them.) A miniature of the fluffy tailed coyote shot up and went zipping through the fence. A street punk in training.

I feed the birds and squirrels on the north side of my house where I let things be wild. Mid-July, the grass is four feet tall. I don’t usually pay any attention to it but this pup sighting made me curious. I waded into the tall grass.  There, inside my fence, I found some spacious, comfortable indentations hidden by grass and the low-hanging laburnam.

Oh. my. god. (And you must know I never, ever put periods in front of words like I just did, that’s how shocked I was.) The den was in my yard, inside my fence. The enemy had breached the gate. They were a day away from breaking into the house and seizing the remote.

To be fair, I think coyotes are wonderful animals. They are the tricksters. As someone with a Gemini sun, I can’t help but appreciate the mythology around them. That doesn’t mean I want them in my yard.

I got out the weed whacker and took down all the grass. My neighbor Bill (servant of Suli) came over with his lawnmower and cut the grass to the ground. Next thing I knew, both Suli and Artemis were out there observing the change in terrain. Artemis was considerably bolder; she didn’t run from the open door any longer. The odor of coyote had left the premises.

I checked “Coyotes” off my list and moved on to the laundry room, which had flooded.