The Call of the Wild

Living in the woods has its moments and last night as David and I settled down for the evening, there was a sound we had never heard before ~frenzied yipping interspersed with howls. It was loud and discordant and lasted for quite a while. Once we determined our TV had not picked up some weird signal, we turned off the television and opened our bedroom window. It was clear that a pack of coyote was close, very close. We listened.
Over the years, we've seen a lone "adolescent" male once or twice roaming the hillside. Young male wolves are excluded from the pack when they begin to vie for the attention of the females, so I imagine it's the same with coyote. We had heard an occasional howl in the summer evening as the sun set behind the ridge, but this was the first time either of us had heard anything like the chaos of the coyote gathering.
Dogs "telegraph" one another in the evenings, at least that's what we call it. One will bark, others reply. There's a sense of communication. The voice of a fox will make the hair on the back of the neck stand on end when it screams into the silence of the night. Owls hoot with a consistency that can be comforting, if you recognize the source. One can fall asleep to the lullaby of owls. Coyote, however, come across as wild and disorderly. I wanted to listen longer; I wanted to make sense of what I was hearing.
I know there is order in the chaos because it is nature and nature makes sense. It is the part of God's creation that never disobeys! Every creature in nature does what it is created to do without question as long as humans don't interfere.
Oh, but we have interfered. We have encroached on the territory of wild animals and they cannot survive our invasion. On any given day, all you have to do is drive along the highway to know that we compete for space with the creatures of the wild. We are so jaded to the frequent, bloated corpse of the deer that we hardly even notice, and we complain vehemently when we hit one because of all the damage to our vehicle! A couple of days ago, there was a news item on the nightly news about a black bear struck down along a highway near Pittsburgh~it looked large as the overhead camera scanned the area. Wonder if it was a female journeying to her "cave" to hibernate and give birth to her young.
I will never tire of living in the woods. I still experience a certain awe when I see deer~ a daily occurrence in my world. I am glad that last night when we did a "pet check" that our little dog was snug in her chair and our outdoor cat was curled up in his usual spot. Coyote like to feast on cats and maybe even little dogs....but, they are just being coyote.
I look forward to the day when the world makes absolute sense~ when the "wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion will yearling together . . . They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." Isaiah 11: 6-9.