The coyote wasn't a pet that was for damn sure. She just came in through the pet door one winter night looking for refuge from the biter cold. Older than the hills and needing a place that was warm, the hearth by the fireplace was just that. I fed her canned dog food because she didn't have a lot of teeth left. Never tried to pet her didn't even give her a name. "Old woman" was as close as I ever came to naming her. She had a spot by the fireplace and some place that wasn't dangerous, no one was pestering her, or trying to shoot her and she had companionship. If you can call an old retired, divorced Air Force vet company. She liked beef jerky, how she ate it I don't know because she really didn't have a lot of teeth but she seemed to enjoy gumming it and sucking the juice out of it. The Old woman knew her time was short, and she needed someone to be with her when she crossed that last threshold. She went quietly and contently, her last days on earth warm and safe with no demands or fears. If I was going to write a story it would be about an old bitch Coyote that came in out of the night in the freezing cold of winter, desperate, alone and afraid. Just needing a place to weather out the season. I would start my story with her laying there by the fireplace her head resting on her paws, with the lights down low, the russet orange light of the fire place dancing over the floor and across the walls and her voice reaching out in the darkness. She would start out by saying, "When I was a cub growing up in the desert I had brothers and sisters to play with, the world was new and interesting and fraught with adventure and my heart was full of the moon----. It would be easy to write, because over the winter months she told me her story and the life she lived. She told me of her first catch and how the rabbit had squealed and kicked surprising her into losing her grip and it getting away. About the cubs she had whelped, and the loves she won and lost. How she never challenged to be alpha female but was challenged and had the task thrust upon her and how she grew old and slow and the winter months harsher and more bitter, how she said her good bye’s to her pack and left to die on her own. How she found a hole in the wall of a human dwelling with warm air and the smell of food and how the human that had lived there let her have her small space by the fireplace away from the cold teeth of winter. A place to die with peace and dignity with someone to be with when the last of her lights faded out---. her thoughts spooling out across the universe, "When I was a cub I had brothers and sisters to play with and the world was new and interesting and fraught with adventure and my heart was full of the moon----------.