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COYOTES AND CARROTS

 When I was growing up on the farm, the one job I really truly despised was weeding the garden. Think about this for a second. Large garden. Like a couple of acres of garden. Nothing small about our garden on the farm. Man, I hated weeding those rows and rows of vegetables. This is now my excuse for hating to eat my vegetables. You see, green, orange, yellow, red, white, brown, any color of vegetable reminds me of my growing up years and the much hated, "Hey, you don’t look like your doing anything, go WEED the garden." "Hey, looks like a couple of hours of daylight left, go WEED the garden."

So when some unknown vandal started to wreck havoc in the garden, it sure didn’t hurt my feelings any. Whoever or whatever was doing it, I figured all the more power to them.

The neat rows of carrots were being hit big time. Every morning, my parents would finish breakfast and make a beeline for the garden. Sure enough, carrot after carrot had been neatly pulled up, the dirt shaken off them, then only one bite taken off the very end of each half grown carrot. Then it was neatly dropped and left to perish on top of the ground.

Dad was getting trigger happy and Mom wanted to hire a private investigator to catch the thief. Best of all, we were running out of carrots. Maybe soon, the vandal could start on the beans. Then hopefully, the parsnips. The possibilities were endless as far as I was concerned. Whoever it was was heaven sent according to my logical way of thinking.

But all good things must come to an end. Dad had rolled out of bed super early one morning to get an early start in the fields. He woke each of us in turn to come see the thief in action through the kitchen window. There stood the fattest, happiest, vegetable loving coyote you ever saw. He pranced down the row of remaining carrots, choosing only the biggest and juiciest.

Straight up pull with his teeth, a couple of quick shakes of his head to rid his prize of dirt, then one gentle bite to the end of each one. Then he laid it down every so carefully and chose the next one.

Our great guard dog was sound asleep only yards away on the step. What the heroic guard dog failed to do, Dad did by firing his shotgun over that coyote’s head. That coyote plumb left the country, never to return. Oh well, it was that much less garden I had to weed. Bless that old coyote.