"In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson.
So at 1AM last evening, awakened,and then dragging and pulling myself from the sheet and quilts of the back bedroom and then next stepping into door-side, slip-on shoes I make my way half-naked outdoors to where 'CASSIDY' my Pyrenees Mountain Dog is going off in a canine tirade of leaps and bounds and barks. In between it all can be heard the baritone growls of his revved up being. He is at the fence in the front yard before the darkness of the dirt road wishing he could snap the metal and plastic leash that is his tether and make his way 'through' the damn wire and wood of the barrier before him and pursue whatever it is that has him in such a condition. I am in a 'catatonic' state of sleep and aching limbs and neck muscles. I've carried with me the flash light from the night stand but as I shine it above the fencing toward the direction of Cassidy's fury I can see nothing more but gravel, illuminated vegetation sweeping in the breezy periphery of the enveloping darkness and the opaque, ribbon-like continuance of the county road to my left and right. My large white dog is smelling the air with muzzle raised as he growls and one can be sure that whatever it was he saw or sensed must have startled the hell out of him as he stretched sound-asleep on his 'doggy-cot' located within the cement/wood enclosure that is the front porch of the farmhouse. It may have been a deer or possum or raccoon but my better instincts tell me otherwise. I have never seen my dog more animated than he is at the moment. I try to calm him and call to him draping my arm around him as I beam the light of the hand-held device into the bleak, foggy, balmy air of the southern night. He remains in a 'tizzy'. I move past him and walk along towards the corner posts of the front yard. I do not see a single thing! Cassidy continues to sniff the air and growl. I know it must have been a coyote. There can be no mistake about it. Earlier, the fellow must have made his way up the banks of the creek and decided to continue his hunting for small game along the darkness of the county road away from the night-light of the farmhouse front. What he had not counted on was a sleeping one-hundred pound dog awakening after his being sensed! Cassidy must have risen his large head and thick mane and peered over the formation of the cement porch walls and discovered him. Then the ruckus had begun. I knew that this particular coyote was in a different zip code by now having taken one look at Cassidy and decided that there were better places to search for food rather than along this creek and farm land. All I could do was return to Cassidy and pet him and praise him and tell him, "Good boy! Good job done. Good boy, Cassi-Bear!" A moment later I returned to bed after he had calmed down only to return a couple more times that evening outdoors. Cassidy would not be silenced! He was not done! The only chance I had to regain any sleep that night was to take hold of him and bring him into the house. There we both managed to crawl up together onto the living room couch for a few hours of sleep. I was tired but it is really all worth it.
Cassidy is a natural-born sentry. Great Pyrenees Mountain dogs were bred by both the ancient French and Spanish in an area and a mountain range (The Pyrenees) that borders both countries. They were bred to guard and protect both livestock and people. Cassidy was simply doing what he and his thousand-year-ago ancestors were meant to do. In summary; he slept on one end of the couch, paws dangling over and snoring like a bear. And I slept on the other end of it unable to straighten my legs fully at any given point. At least he kept me warm on such a damp and breezy late summer's night as it was.
-RSC
(a post-mention to this journal entry; a wildlife camera in a nearby hollow by Bridges Creek here in Elijah, Missouri caught an American Black Bear passing through. Thus, Cassidy had smelled and sensed not a coyote but a bear.)
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