Always Wary
Photo by: Janet Kessler
I invite you to envision yourself as a teenage Coyote, leaving behind her puppyhood and making the next resolute decisions for her survival. She has endured the summer with the threats of disease, starvation, dehydration, death from large predators, and the potential that her parents may or may not survived themselves.
Autumn has come and November will soon bring a change in the air. ..the coming of winter. She now looks like a slim adult, but she is not an adult. Think of our human teenagers, who often may look like an adult, but are in no way an adult. They have learned the basics of how to survive in our human society and some of the skills they will need as an adult, but they have much more to learn about the culture and the world around them. And it is during this time that they begin to make decisions for their future life.
So too, with the teenage Coyote. She must decide if it is more advantageous to her survival to remain with her parents for another year or better to strike out on her own. How much food is available in her parents’ territory? Will there be enough for the whole family or not? Will she have more food if she strikes out on her own?
These are life and death decisions as starvation follows Coyotes throughout their lives.
And if she does decide to stay with her parents, will that give her the opportunity to learn more survival skills from her parents under their protection, and in the safety of their territory? And if new pups are born the following year, she may learn the skills of caring for her own future pups, once she strikes out on her own and meets her future mate.
But if she does decide to leave the safety of her family, does she have enough experience with the dangers outside her family’s territory? How much does she know about humans and how dangerous they are? It is her lack of experience with humans that may cause her death. For the greatest threat to her survival are humans who will seek to take her life ….just for sport.
She must be wary ….always wary…….to survive and become an indomitable adult.
