Every morning, I pop out the back door and swing around the corner of the house to enter the screened enclosure attached to its south side to clean my cat's litter box. Pipig usually follows me, entering her "catio" by means of a small pet door inside the living room, and I allow her 5 minutes of loosely supervised outdoor time to chew grass and generally take a look around. Yesterday, as I opened the door, I got a big surprise.
The coyote took off as I simultaneously slammed the door closed. As I told my husband about my sighting, we both looked out the living room window to the south (near the catio) and saw the coyote looking back at us. As soon as he realized he'd been sighted again, he took off and kept going that time.
My husband pulled 30 seconds of video coverage of him stalking through the garden preceding our encounter.
Pipig wasn't in any direct danger during this encounter but she's probably not going to be allowed outside again during the morning hours for the foreseeable future. She usually follows me around until she gets her outdoor time, brief as it is, but she didn't do so yesterday. It may be that she was aware a coyote was in the vicinity. She'd woken both my husband and I up during the early morning hours going from window to window watching something. Our outdoor motion-detection lights went off around 5am so we checked the security camera footage around that time too and got another slice of critter action in our back garden. The following 37-second video shows a raccoon at our fountain, surprised in much the same way as I was several hours later.
So it seems we were visited by at least one raccoon and two coyotes last night. My husband saw both coyotes on another camera shortly after the larger one took off after the raccoon so we're reasonably certain the raccoon wasn't harmed.
That's my Wednesday Vignette. For more, visit Anna at Flutter & Hum.
All material © 2012-2020 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party
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| It's hard to say which of us was more startled: me or the coyote (Photo taken from security camera footage) |
The coyote took off as I simultaneously slammed the door closed. As I told my husband about my sighting, we both looked out the living room window to the south (near the catio) and saw the coyote looking back at us. As soon as he realized he'd been sighted again, he took off and kept going that time.
My husband pulled 30 seconds of video coverage of him stalking through the garden preceding our encounter.
Pipig wasn't in any direct danger during this encounter but she's probably not going to be allowed outside again during the morning hours for the foreseeable future. She usually follows me around until she gets her outdoor time, brief as it is, but she didn't do so yesterday. It may be that she was aware a coyote was in the vicinity. She'd woken both my husband and I up during the early morning hours going from window to window watching something. Our outdoor motion-detection lights went off around 5am so we checked the security camera footage around that time too and got another slice of critter action in our back garden. The following 37-second video shows a raccoon at our fountain, surprised in much the same way as I was several hours later.
So it seems we were visited by at least one raccoon and two coyotes last night. My husband saw both coyotes on another camera shortly after the larger one took off after the raccoon so we're reasonably certain the raccoon wasn't harmed.
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| Pipig calmly basking in the sun filtering through the front door yesterday afternoon |
That's my Wednesday Vignette. For more, visit Anna at Flutter & Hum.
All material © 2012-2020 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party