Category: Dog Bob

As we pulled into the park this morning, my headlines caught a fox trotting across the hoary grass. The dogs started bouncing around in the truck while I slowed to watch. He was big with a magnificent tail held high in the 17-degree air. After casting a quick look at me, he continued on with his business, nosing the bushes and looking for something to pounce on.

It’s the first time I’ve seen a live fox at Melton Hill. We did come across a dead one a few years ago. It was badly mangled, probably by a coyote or two from the looks of it. It was a real treat to get a good look of one on the prowl.

I took the dogs to the lake yesterday and today, but the two hikes were strangely different.

Xena and I were lumbering behind the hounds this morning when I heard a preternatural wailing rise among the cawing and honking sounds that welcome sunrise.

At first, I thought it was just me. But Xena had stopped dead in her tracks and was looking in the same direction. I was trying to figure out what was going on in the wooded hills across Melton Hill Lake. We cast a glance at each other, then back at the water, where thick columns of fog were rising up into the cold morning air. All we needed was a chainsaw-wielding maniac wearing a hockey mask.

Then it hit me. Coyotes. I’ve heard them caterwauling in Hardin Valley in the evening, but this was the first time I’d heard them at the lake in the morning. From the sound of it, there were two groups of them over there, maybe a half-mile apart, calling out to each other.

The effect was amazing. Xena and I listened for a while, then continued walking toward the hounds and the indignant protests of a turkey they’d rousted.