Coyote

During Paloma's swimming lesson tonight, Carmen, Gabriel & I went to deliver a birthday invitation nearby. Our friends Brian & Amy (not to be confused with my brother-in-law
& sister Brian & Amy) live in a neighborhood we love. Plus, it's a hop, skip & a jump from two of our favorite restaurants: Red, Hot & Blue and Rosa's Tortilla Factory (and Tuesdays are Taco night). We take a backroad and we're there.

But on this backroad today, we saw not one, but two coyotes on our way to their house. I slowed way down and got a good look at the first one and showed it to the kids--it was less than 5 yards away. Then we saw another one in an adjacent field.

So on the way back, I asked the kids if they wanted to try to get a photo. They did. So we pulled over near where we'd seen the first one before. The kids spotted it across the way, mostly camouflaged by tall grass. Just as I got the camera ready (Carmen's camera, which takes longer and also has some substance on the lens making everything look blurry), an ambulance or fire truck siren sounded. The coyote lifted his head and howled with the siren several times as I struggled with the camera. (It shoots movies, but it kept saying, Memory Card Error. I turned it off and on again, but by this time the siren and the howling had stopped.) Still, the kids got to witness this firsthand from about 30 yards away!

They were excited to tell David & Paloma about it when we picked them up from swim lessons.