Coyotes and Homeless Men

I heard howling in the nearby hills late at night a few nights ago. I’m told there are plenty of coyotes prowling around the North Georgia mountains. That may explain why there is no feral cat problem around here.

It sounded like there several of them, and the sound was enough to cause me to pause from what I was doing and listen. I have to admit that the sound was chilling and a little scary.

This was the first time I heard coyotes howling. They did not sound like the ones you hear in the soundtracks of those old westerns when everyone is laying around next to a campfire near a saguaro cactus leaning on their saddles and bed rolls eating beans off a tin plate with a large spoon. (As a kid I always wondered whether cowboys ever used knives and forks. The movies always showed them using a large spoon. It must have been a bitch to eat a large piece of meat with a spoon.)

The coyotes in those westerns sounded almost comforting like they were calling out a friendly nighttime hello. The coyotes I heard the other night sounded like they belonged in a Dracula movie set in Transylvania. In my mind’s eye I could picture a creepy forest of gnarly trees under a full moon obscured by clouds with tendrils of low-lying fog twisting among the tree trunks. Holy crap! Now that I think about it, that describes what it can be like around here at times.

It occurs to me that I may be confusing coyotes and wolves. Were they coyotes or wolves howling in the old westerns? Do they even have coyotes in Transylvania? Anyway, the sound of the coyotes set off every dog in a five mile radius, and if you've ever been to North Georgia, that's a lot of dogs.

It didn't help my sense of unease that there was a sliver of a moon, and the night was dark as a serial killer’s soul.

It also didn't help that there is a homeless man wandering around the neighborhood. It seems he has moved into the abandoned house over the ridge. We refer to it as the old meth lab though we have no basis in fact to call it that. It’s probably just a foreclosure situation but describing it as an old meth lab conjures up the right image. The roof is falling in and most of the windows are gone. Small saplings are growing through the abandoned tires and debris surrounding the place, and vines are growing up the rotting walls of the house. It looks like it belongs on the set of a movie like “The Hills Have Eyes.” All in all, it's a creepy place, and your first reaction is to steer clear of it.

The homeless man wanders the gravel road that leads to the gravel road that leads to our property. He always carries a walking stick. We have taken to calling him the thin man because, well, he’s thin and tall. Duh. I know that’s not very creative on our part, but it fits.

I do not really know that this guy is homeless or that he lives in the old meth lab. Meredith heard it from the lady who lives a quarter of a mile down the road from us. Who knows how she came by the information. For all I truly know, this guy could be John Muir or some nature lover out on a daily stroll. Put a beard on him, and he could be Gandalf.

The few times I’ve seen him on the road, I’ve given him a little wave as I drove by (it’s what one does around here), and he’s waved back. I sure as hell have not stopped and talked to him out of fear that he really is homeless and would take it as an invitation to stop by the house for a meal and a beer or to murder my family. (I mean, you never really know about these things, do you?)

I suppose I could go on a little recon and crawl over the hill to covertly observe the meth house, but that sounds like a lot of work and a great chance to get to know Mr. Chigger, Mr. Poison Ivy, and Mr. Bramble.

A couple of nights ago Meredith was on the porch in the dark talking on her cell phone. When she came in she said she saw a distant glowing red ember moving about the field in front of our house. She thought it may have been the glow of a cigarette or a cigar. I rushed out on the porch in the typical male display of protective bravado, but saw nothing. Now Meredith wonders if it was the thin man spying on us.

His presence in the vicinity has set us all on edge a little, and we've taken to locking the workshop door at night. When I’m working outside, I will look up unexpectedly and scan the wood line to make sure that he’s not hanging around the property.

It’s funny how the sound of coyotes howling in the distant hills or the presence of a stranger in the area can rouse certain fears and concerns in you. Reading this post in the safe comfort of your home, you may think that we’re overreacting and that our fears are irrational. But let me get your ass out here on a dark night with the howls of coyotes in the background and the knowledge that there may be a homeless man prowling around, and I bet you won’t be wandering around in the dark.

Am I truly concerned? No, not really. Cautious and alert is probably the better way to describe my feelings. But then I have numbers on my side. Those numbers are .357, 9 mm, 12 gauge, 20 gauge, .308, 30-30, and .223.

There were coyotes and homeless men wandering around in Pinellas County, and the real question is whether my level of concern is any greater or lesser here in the mountains than it was in suburbia. The answer to that is no, though it might be nice on a dark night with coyotes howling in the background if there was a streetlight or two closer than ten miles away.