Old Man Coyote and the creatures of Westerly Creek

We have a manmade ‘natural’ park across the street from our house in Denver that meanders and wraps around the whole neighborhood for about 2 square miles. It has been planted with native trees and plants, and is really green this year because of all the rain we have had. Westerly Creek runs through the middle of it and there is a large pond to collect run-off water. This makes a great habitat for birds and wildlife. The pond and adjacent creek are home to ducks, herons, king fishers, flickers, meadow larks, nesting swallows, red wing blackbirds, and raccoons as well as craydads, fishes and frogs. The park is criss-crossed with paved and gravel trails and bridges crossing the stream and is a favorite haunt of human creatures such as bikers, skaters, runners, walkers and their dogs, and moms with baby carriages. Downstream some beavers have built a dam by prairie dogtown by gnawing down some of saplings that the City planted to make the park pretty.

The grass is really tall, about 3 feet high which encourages bunnies, prairie dogs and field mice. This year a couple of obnoxious blackbirds, probably with fledglings hidden in the grass, have taken up residence at the entrance across the street from us and are dive bombing anyone that walks by. One day they took great exception to Sweet Pickle and harassed him for about 75 feet before they flew back to their perch on a fir tree. Lately they seem to be most offended by runners—attacking all of them without exception. I see a few runners now wearing biking helmets as they jog by. Unfortunately now that the cherry tree in our front yard is bearing ripening fruit they have decided they own it too, and will fly into my yard to attack me if I go near it.

For the past four years we have heard coyotes howling off and on at night. Last year I saw one about 400 feet away in the tall grass sneaking around trying to hide from people and their dogs that were walking by on the trail. But this year they have moved in and we hear them howling in the daytime as well. Esperando went for a walk and one walked by about 5 feet from him. Some guy he talked to on the trail told him that people were feeding and petting it. Several weeks ago when I was walking Sweet Pickle in the park a coyote brazenly crossed our path not 10 feet away. Sweet Pickle was off leash when I suddenly realized the coyote was there (it seemed to appear from out of nowhere), they both pointedly ignored one another although I was freaked out that the coyote was so unafraid of us to come so near. Then last week after one of the strong storms passed through, I saw a dead baby coyote washed up on the stream bank. Yesterday the Division of Wildlife posted a Coyote Warning sign across the street from us.

Across the greater Denver metropolitan area, coyotes are becoming a big issue with headlines making the newspapers and magazines, such as: Coyotes Attack Colorado Woman and Her Lab from Field & Stream; In Colorado, coyote protectors clash with a hired gun reported from the LA Times; and Sharpshooters kill 5 coyotes in Broomfield from the Denver Post. It seems both the human and the coyote populations are increasing exponentially and co-habiting is not on. When will we learn that wild animals should be treated with respect and not treated as pets? When we teach them to not fear us by feeding them, we are not doing them any favor. They become embrazoned enough to attack children, pets and even adults. In the end they unfortunately pay for it with their the loss of lives. And in this particular instance we have not encroached on their territory, but have created a pleasing habitat that is an attractive draw to them.

Hazards encountered in warp drive

This is how our life works right now. It’s pretty confusing as we are traveling in two different time zones, literally and figurally. I stay here in Denver taking long naps, watching TV, and exercising my arm while my brain moves at 25 MPH. Esperando hops around like a flea all over North America commuting for his job between the San Francisco Bay Area, Vancouver, Santa Rosalia, Mexico City and Denver, mentally and physically speeding around at Mach 10. Two days ago he was on his way up here from Baja, but because his flight was delayed by three hours he missed his connection in Los Angeles and had to spend the night there. He got up to go to the LAX airport at 3:30 am to start wait-listing for the earliest possible flight out and arrived in Denver mid-morning yesterday. The first thing we did was go buy him a new suitcase as his current one is trashed; he travels so constantly that he goes through a suitcase in about 6 months. When we got back to the house, he worked the rest of the day stopping at 6 pm to grill lamb burgers for dinner. This morning we took the dog for a walk, then I went to yet another doctor appointment while he packed to go to Washington, D.C. for some important financing meetings.

My new doctor is a back specialist. I have been having problems with my lower back for the last two months and it took about a month to get an appointment with this guy. I was still struggling to fill out the paperwork that the doctor’s office gives you when you start out as a new patient and was shown to an examining room when my cell phone rang. It was Esperando wanting to know if I left the suit that he wanted to wear to D.C. at the cleaners after the Brainy Blonde’s wedding in May. “I think it’s the one I gave away to the Goodwill,” he muttered as he hung up. I was still trying to focus on the forms and not think about the suit when the doctor came into the room. I must not be the only one who is behind the eight ball filling out these forms as there was a ‘bone pile’ of about ten discarded pens lurking on the table beside me from others who had been finishing up their personal data. The doctor decided I would probably get better on my own, but need some physical therapy for a bulging disc. Oh boy, more physical therapy!! He sent me off with a couple of prescriptions and a new appointment should things not improve.

Now that I was done with the doctor, I could properly focus on the Missing Suit. I just couldn’t ever remember taking it to the cleaners. Then it came to me—he hadn’t worn a suit at the wedding; he wore a blazer. The suit had been given to the Goodwill because he said it didn’t fit anymore. When I got home I reminded him of this. “Yes,” he said, “I gave away the wrong suit, I gave away the suit that fit me. The one left in my closet now was the one made in Thailand that doesn’t fit.”

It is one of those ‘Aha!’ moments. Your husband hands you a nice wool suit and says, “give this away, it doesn’t fit anymore, I don’t know how it ever could have fit even when I had the tailor make it 15 years ago in Thailand. In fact, it is impossible that it ever fit me.” This little nagging in your brain tells you that the suit he is handing you is not the right one, not the one from Thailand that you remembered being a different fabric, but your conscious mind is not listening to that little nagging voice. You are remembering the trip to Thailand—going to the tailor there; eating Thai food; watching the little Thai girls give him a haircut/massage; and thinking about how the suit did fit him at one time. You are clearly not focused on the suit you are holding in your hands. Your brain stopped concentrating when you married Esperando, now it is basically a lame brain. And if you're are Esperando, your brain moves way to fast, it is like a stone skipping over the water, missing little chunks of information along the way because you are riding the waves and most of the time it works, but now and then something falls through the cracks. And that, my friends, is how you give away the wrong suit.

Casa Abeja update

Even in the absences between Esperando’s business trips and my current situation side railed in Denver with my shoulder, work proceeds on the reconstruction of Casa Abeja, our cute little bungalow in the historic French district of Santa Rosalia. We have been working on it now since last December. I am ready to move in, but of course it is not ready yet and I am not there to do the moving in. When Esperando is there he continues working on the house, and then leaves his lads to carry on while we are gone. Above we start with a photo of the house as it looked when we bought it.

In addition to Jorge and Francisco who work directly for us, we have several principal players working on our house: Ramon the plumber, a trustworthy hardworking guy but hard to find for add-on work even when you owe him money; Ruben the talented tile/concrete/roof man; and Carpintero, the carpenter (or Carpy as some refer to him). The prices we are charged seem low for what we would pay in the U.S. for anything similar to what we get, but they seem high to the Mexicans lads that are helping us out who tell us we are being ripped off. Esperando finds small town life in Santa Rosalia like it used to be in our country; the hardware stores let him take stuff away without paying right then and there, knowing that his credit is good and he will be back with the money later.

The tile work is now completed in the bathroom and the interior is all painted, we are still missing the chair rail on some walls which Carpy is to provide. We still lack kitchen appliances and finished plumbing in the bathroom. The windows and doors are in, the exterior has been painted and re-roofed and new railings are under construction around the perimeter. It is all taking shape. The concrete base has been put in for fence railing.

One of my worries is whether the large dining table we bought at the Galeria de la Paz (to ultimately bring back with us to Denver) is actually going to be able to be juggled through the door frame of Casa Abeja. The doors are fairly narrow and the table is a large heavy piece of furniture that is one piece of construction.

Esperando sent me some photos recently to update me on how the house is looking. While we were admiring the tile work in the bathroom I lamented that I wished they had left an inch of rust colored tile between the blue of the edge tile and the sink, at which point Esperando said they needed the room for faucets—whoops! What is wrong with this picture? Ruben left the room for the faucet but not the opening. I suppose it may be ready in two more months as Esperando keeping telling me!