“The White Death is loose,” I said to the girls as I stepped in to our log home from the moonlit night. It was a nightly ritual. We turn Jackie, our seasoned veteran Great Pyrenees dog free from her run most nights. She and Allie Shacker, our young Pyr, have the run of the ranch after dark. They rule the night.
We sleep soundly despite the deep rolling continual bark of Jackie and her trainee, Allie. They work the big circle around our ranch house, always about a half mile away. They follow the fence along the river bottoms, and up around the yearling cattle that are bedded down in the big prairie meadow above our home. I watch them in the moonlight working her way through the beeves; rarely do the cattle rise from their beds, as they would if a border collie was passing among them. Jackie understands that her position is head of ranch security; instead of seeing her as predator, she is protection to them.
A coyote yips under a waxing gibbous moon on the Eastern frontier of the big meadow, where it drops into the thickets of river bottom. It’s all it takes. Two white ghosts in the lunar light streak out for the sound pursuing potential predator into the dark and impenetrable woods of the spring-fed Pahsimeroi. The coyote finds an easy escape there on game trails through the labyrinth that only he knows.
We have chickens, completely free to roam, even at night. Baby calves are being born as I write this. Ethan has 40 head of little porkers on pasture just above the house. A pack of coyotes or even a lone wolf or cougar could easily and quite happily decimate any of these.
And so, the White Death.
I don’t know if they’ve ever captured a coyote. We’ve had an occasional wolf lope through while crossing the valley. And I’m sure we’ve had the big cats—mountain lions in the thick woods of the wide Pahsimeroi bottoms, as evidenced by the long claw marks on the back of an occasional steer. But Jackie and Allie keep them at bay, at distance from their charges. Their Pyrenees blood runs thick with anti-canine fervor.
And so it goes through the night. We really have no idea what transpires, but this one morning, I got a glimpse of what may actually go on.
The early morning glow of predawn light shone in our bedroom window. I pulled my jeans on and shuffled to the big window in the stairwell. In my predawn slumber, I had heard the white dogs going crazy out there, and although used to it, I could tell that there was something close at hand by the intensity of their bark. Then, as quickly as the din started, it stopped. I went back to the bedroom to finish dressing, then headed out and started down the stairs. I paused at the stairwell window again just in time for an eyewitness account.
A big tawny-gray coyote was in our front yard, just 50 feet from our front door. He was quietly emerging from the deeply shadowed three-foot-tall grass along the buck and pole fenced boundary of the mowed turf, and took three steps onto the lawn, and stopped to yawn. He looked bored. His eyes wandered over to watch a big Pyrenees on the front steps who hadn’t seen him yet. He waited for her gaze to extend his way and moved one foot. It was all it took. Jackie exploded from the front steps, with all ferocity unleashed.
He waited patiently up to a split second before the 125-lb Great Pryrenees was upon him, and then, ducked handily between the rails of the 5-pole jack fence that marked the lawn boundary. White Death hit the jack fence like a fat cop and clambered over the 5-foot-high rails and resumed pursuit. Coyote waited now 40 feet away on a big log, 3 feet off the ground and was off in a flash when Jackie left the ground, bared teeth snapping shut at only air. Another jack fence awaited the two, where a repeat rail fence performance again was made; then, it was wide open across the big hay meadow beyond.
Jackie was gaining; she had the long legs, after all, as they beelined for the river bottoms. Then just as Jackie was about to grab tail, coyote darted…hard left, and then again, hard right. Jackie lost her advantage as the laws of physics and momentum took over, and they hit the brush of the bottoms. It was hopeless pursuit, and finally, Jackie emerged, winded, but wagging her big tail slowly. She seemed at least peaceful in the knowledge that she had run the devil dog off and as a result, prevailed. She checked over her shoulder for coy-dog several times and rested assured on her proud return that it was a job well done.
But then, in the faint light, I spied the coyote again, lightly stepping briskly, silently up to the tail of Jackie. He carefully mirrored her movements, acting as a shadow would. He silently trotted behind her very massive rear end and flag waving tail. It was the same tail that wagged proudly about her success. She felt indomitable; her head rode high on her neck; hair stood still on end in her surety as an awesome force to be reckoned with.
She swung to the right, and her skinny and tawny shadow did likewise. She intentionally belly crawled under the jack fence; shadow followed her lead. She trotted erect and proudly to the front yard; he did the same. Now, as the duo approached the very domain of her front steps throne, I believe I could detect a smirky grin on his face. Wiley coyote had the last laugh.
Just as the two stepped onto the front lawn, now fifty feet distant from the front door, Pyrenees number two, Allie Shacker, came unglued with a blast of roaring fury from her own perch on the front steps. Confused by the rushing onslaught directed at her, Jackie held her ground for their terrific meeting until Allie roared by. Then, and finally then, Jackie realized she had been had. The pride drained from her as she too, ran in pursuit of the trickster.
And so it went on. First Allie, then Jackie. Was the coyote playing? Testing? Were Allie and Jackie in on the game and it was all a great show? I saw a similar drama unfold last summer with our elderly Anatolian shepherd (who doesn’t want to work very hard anymore and spends most nights inside). A little coyote, perhaps a yearling, would let her chase him under the river bottom jack fence, but he actually snuck up behind her as she trotted back to home after giving chase, and nipped her in the butt! She’d whirl around and give chase again, but it sure looked like the coyote was having fun.
But the coyotes haven’t dared touch our birds, hogs or calves here. Perhaps there is some unspoken line, this is play, but mess with my stuff and you’ll get the jaws of white death. Whatever the communication, the deterrence of Pyr pays off. Coyotes know they are here, on the job, and are formidable. 
It’s a lesson that we embody ourselves in our relationship with wolves and other predators up on the ranges. Sure, we share habitat with them as we graze our beeves up there in those wild landscapes. But they know humans spell unpredictable and danger, and since we are there all the time, Alderspring beef is off limits. It works. And we haven’t sustained any wolf losses since we started living with our cattle, now, for 4 years. We used to lose 4 or more beeves a year.
It’s about being proactive instead of reactive. Proactive finds a way to coexist. Reactive leaves a wake of loss behind it. It’s husbandry, and I thank you for being part of it.
Happy Trails.
Glenn, Caryl, Girls and Cowhands at Alderspring.
Leave a Reply