My brother took this photo of a coyote in his backyard. Beautiful picture!
When I saw the photo, it made me think of a few children’s stories, i.e Little Red Riding Hood, Aesop’s Fables: The Fox and the Grapes and Pinocchio. However, I realized those stories use a “fox” as a character and not a “coyote,” but I thought how similar these animals look. So, I found a photo of a fox to compare to the coyote, you can see as well.
I am in the process of writing a children’s book and it seems that the animals most used are mice, bears, foxes and frogs.. not a coyote very often and if it is used it seems to be in a story related to the Southwest. Although, now the coyote has ventured to normal neighborhoods like our small town in Indiana.
As the Universe would have it, I was reading the WSJ the other day and there was an article about coyotes by David Roberts called, “The Original Bolshevik.” It did not paint a pretty picture of the coyote. I enjoyed the article as it gave a little history lesson on who the coyote is and where he has come today.
I smiled when Roberts said in the past, the settlers would “fear” the howl, whine and chatter of the coyote and now when we hear the howling on a camping trip, we are not afraid, but more interested in catching a glimpse of this animal with the vision of the moon behind him, which is the picture etched in our minds. I guess it would be like catching a glimpse of a bat or a vampire… we want to see “what they are up to” in the dark of the night, from a distance, of course, so we can write about it!
In my Google search I read that coyotes/foxes do not normally hurt or eat humans, but they have been venturing toward neighborhoods in search of food. Many people leave cat/dog food out and they like it. They also eat squirrels, rabbits, mice, rats, insects, fish, frogs, berries and different fruits.
The howling is a group exercise I read and a form of communication between them, but nothing more and they are sneaky and smart with a keen sense of smell. I think this is why we find them intriguing, we just don’t know what they are “up to.”
For example, when I lived in Chicago the media was in uproar when a “coyote” walked into a Quizno’s sandwich shop during the day and went to lie down in the cooler where they had the cold drinks. That caught everyone by surprise.
I told you… they are sneaky!
I climbed Mount Si this past weekend. I’m sure you are wondering about it, so I will refer you to 
The climb took us about 3 hours up the mountain. Going down was tough, because it was steep and my shoes were not cooperating. I didn’t have enough cushion in them and my feet kept moving forward. There were a few times that I hoped a rescue team might come by, my feet were hurting so much, but that miracle did not happen. My friend made a joke that I was not going to be able to manifest it. So, I gave up on the wishing, and focused on getting down.
Yesterday, I ventured to Bainbridge Island to visit the 
This week I was talking to a few people about my trip to Italy. They were asking me what I saw and I jokingly said, “Well, I was on the bridge of gold.” As they have not been to Florence, they did not know about the Ponte Vecchio. This reminded me of my arrival to San Francisco years ago when someone pointed to a reddish/orange bridge and said, “There is the Golden Gate Bridge.” WHAT? It’s orange, I thought. I had envisioned something totally different, so it was a bit of a let down for sure.
Right now, gold is at an all time high at over $1,200 an ounce. It was interesting to compare what they were selling now on the bridge from jewelry styles a few years ago.
If you like pasta, there is nothing better than going through an Italian super market. I was walking through the isles of the grocery store in Florence, Italy with my Italian mother and we came to the pasta section. As I looked at the choices with amazement, I asked her WHY with ALL the pasta choices she ONLY used spaghetti or penne pasta when we were growing up. She didn’t have a clear answer, she just kept dinner simple.
always spaghetti with bolognese sauce. Nothing wrong with that mind you, but when I went to another Italian’s house for lunch or dinner it was totally different from my house. My Italian girlfriend would cook with different pasta shapes and add vegetables to her pastas.
As I continued on with my mother, we stopped by the produce section to find some tomatoes. Well, I had to smile… they had all kinds of tomatoes to choose from in big bins and our shopping adventure would not have been complete if we had not bought our parmesan cheese!
I am in Florence, Italy and the weather has been a bit rainy and cloudy. I happened to take this great picture of the Ponte Vecchio, the bridge where they sell the gold, just before it started to rain. Looks a bit spooky with the dark clouds. There are a lot of tourists here right now.
I was lucky to be here on May 1st when Florence has their May Day Parade every year. It was wonderful to see the procession of peope in beautiful Florentine costumes coming down the street. Of course, tourists are always a bit rude and were constantly standing in the way of the parade walkers, so the police came to keep tourists out of the middle of the street.
A walk around Florence wouldn’t be complete without seeing an artist at work. They really are good.
There seems to be an art craze going on right now. I am not an artist by trade, but I have always wanted to learn how to paint using water colors in particular. So, I was pleasantly surprised when a friend recently told me about a company called, “
