Strange Encounter

My husband and I walk our two dogs early in the morning. On weekdays it's usually just to a park three blocks away where our terrier can chase his glow ball and the hound can be a hound, but on the weekends we go the other direction up the canyon by our house. Most of the time it's just beginning to be light so by the time we get back to the salt storage amphitheater there is enough light for the terrier to work on his frisbee skills.

This morning, however, it was quite a bit earlier, very dark when we left the house at 5 and still dark when we were coming back down the hill. Now this canyon is partly wild and partly groomed and the creek that runs through it is a water source for the city so there are some weirs and some catchment ponds. There is a wide variety of animal life hanging in the woods and the ponds, and many of the city's less fortunate citizens camp out in the deeper sections of woods. We see deer very frequently, beaver occasionally, rabbits and hares, and a wide variety of birds from bank swallows to turkeys and kingfishers and ducks. More rarely we see foxes and coyotes, usually from a longer distance than the deer, but sometimes right in front of our house.

This morning, when it was still quite dark, we saw two canidae walking up the sidewalk coming toward us. This was on the way back home so we were out of the wilder area and in to the purely residential space--paved roads, sidewalks, automatic sprinklers. It was so dark and they were about half a block away so we couldn't even be sure what they were. They seemed too tall to be coyotes and too small to be wolves but they could be some sort of hybrid of the two. One of the two quickly stepped off the sidewalk and went behind a house but the other one stood there for a bit staring at us. Then it backed up and kept backing up down one of the side streets always keeping an eye on us. Chances are it had already eaten its fill of the feral cats in the area plus with two dogs on leashes and two humans, we presented as a stronger pack than he had. When it got to the next intersection, it turned up the street and disappeared from view.

It was such a strange encounter that the whole day seemed changed.