Chain

At midnight a group of us sat around the fire, roasting marshmallows and tellin' lies and laughing. In a pause we heard a sound not too far off. "Hey!" said I. "Other people are partying tonight, too!" And we whooped and then they whooped in this brief call-and-response, across the forest, across the darkness.

The next night we were only three around the fire: tellin' truths, sober, somber. We heard those other partiers again. "Two nights in a row," I said. "They must be young!" My husband's friend, who hadn't been there the night before, looked at me strangely.

Coyotes. Those were coyotes howling, in the forest near Camp Sherman.

I never heard coyotes before. They sound so human! I was amazed.

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ODFW killed another cougar in Corvallis last week. That article includes an address; take a look. It's a neighborhood.


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And this summer people chased a bear out of downtown Sisters, and this morning ODFW met in Bend to discuss updates to its Wolf Management Plan – of special interest to Central Oregonians (wrote The Bulletin) because of recent wolf sightings here.

All these animals at the top of the chain. Let's hope there's enough food to go around, eh?