The Beasts of New Paltz

My neighbor visited.  He had a sad tale he shared concerning his dog, Spike.  I’d known Spike.  Spike was a spunky little poodle.  The kind of poodle who had difficulty convincing the big house cats that there was any bite to his bark.  Apparently, he stepped out in the snow a few winters back and was promptly snapped up by what my neighbor referred to as a ‘coy wolf.’  His wife chased the beast till it dropped Spike who by then, was already dead. 

This got my wife concerned about the beasts of New Paltz.   Precisely what else is there out there in the woods around our place.  I commented that I’d seen two large, grey mammals, at least two and half feet in length scurrying down the drainage sluice and into the underbrush.  I was thinking of something exotic like a wolverine or an otter, but my neighbor insisted it was just a big groundhog. 

We spent some time considering all the different mammals one might encounter.  Black bears?  Yes.  Might there ever be a mountain lion?  No.  Skunks and porcupines and raccoons and groundhogs sure.  Beavers?  Unlikely.  With each new animal mentioned, my wife found  a corresponding video to view.  But it was the coywolf, with the gruesome story of poor Spike that seemed to demand her attention at the outset.  It was not helpful that she found a video which described the death of jogger from a coywolf in the trails of Nova Scotia.  “That is really far north from here, honey.”

Long after my neighbor left, my wife continued her research, watching porcupines shoot their needles. “do you see that, they are barbed and tear you when you pull them out.”, and considering, up close, the special glands that protrude from a skunk before it aims and sprays, sending a coyote running.  I got up to the window and tried to see if I could find my ground hogs but they were nowhere to be seen.  The ground hog video isn’t very interesting.

Sunday, 8/11/19