I have a new acquaintance I met a few weeks back.  We have a grassy area across the street where people come to run their dogs.  I take Ed out on a LONG leash since I can’t trust him.  When there are other dogs he pretty much sticks with them, so then I move to the shorter leash.

Chris has been a godsend.  She grew up in San Clemente and is very friendly and very funny and is a walking talking yellow pages for the area.  She has two school aged daughters and a husband and of course, Hazel the dog.    Hazel is a rescue too and is kind of a terrier, much smaller than Ed.  They have a blast and have become quite…ahem…romantic of late.  Fortunately they have both been neutered.

Chris started a new job a week or so ago and so we decided to get up early – like 6 a.m. – for our 15 minutes of chatting and watching the dogs play.  She texts me that she’s on her way, I hop out of bed and walk across the street.  Yesterday was our first day of this new routine and as I was walking out of the garage with Ed on leash out of the corner of my eye I saw him – a gorgeous coyote prancing across the street about 300 feet away, headed straight for the canyon beyond the park.

He was moving fast, his head turning from side to side, scanning for who knows what.  He disappeared down the canyon and apparently hightailed it over to the next cross street a good block away, as Chris saw him coming out of her house. He was the most beautiful coyote I’ve ever seen.  Most of them that I’ve seen in Yosemite or anywhere out west are scrawny buggers, look like they haven’t had a meal in weeks.  This guy was obviously well fed and I don’t like to think on what.

Today I was sitting in the tv room and something else caught my eye on the  short wall in the back patio area.   Darned if it didn’t look like a roadrunner, but certainly not here near the ocean.  I didn’t get a chance to look it up on the computer until tonight, and when I did I searched “birds of Orange County, california.”  I was quite astonished when I discovered that it WAS a roadrunner!

Then I remembered the coyote.  But of course!  It all makes sense now…