Story of the Coyote

I dreamt...
My sister was once manager of a horse barn, which occasionally coyotes liked to pass through. At the time, a coyote killed several horses on the ranch, and no body managed to shoot it or catch it. The neighbors, feeling helpless as a crab skittering across the sand, called on the manager to recommend my services, as Sharron the Hunter, to kill the coyote feeling no other person was equal to the task.

However unfortunately, the dream was I was killed by a coyote during my last trimester of pregnancy. The doctors were able to keep me alive long enough to extract my baby daughter. The father, standing close to his newborn as a shadow, prayed and made a wish about his daughter: You must kill coyotes for your livelihood, that is your calling. Owing to this, all of the Sharron women were experts at hunting and killing the coyote.

So finally my sister employed the Sharron Hunters, promising a large reward. When they rode in on horseback, one was an old woman with white hair, who coughed and wheezed, and had pronounced veins in her cheeks, and the other was a seventeen-year-old girl with dull stays on the sides of her vest. The barn manager was greatly disappointed by their appearance. Noticing the disappointment, the old woman knelt on one knee and said, "I hear that this evil coyote is only 5 miles from town, so we had better get going and catch it before it travels any further." And so they set out at once, pressing their heels into their horses' flanks silently urging them on.

At an easy lope they followed a narrow dirt road through a desert-like pasture and found the den. Outside the den, the girl howled loudly like a coyote, and in no time the coyote rushed out with its ears flicked and leapt at the old woman. The old woman stood her ground, raising a short switch blade, three inches long. As the coyote was about to attack her, she dodged to one side, and the coyote jumped over her, landing in the pasture with blood streaming out. They crowded around and discovered that the coyote was neatly cut right from the chin to the tip of its tail as it touched the blade. My sister then generously rewarded the Sharrons' for their help. The old woman recounted that she had trained with knives since she was ten years old. She could also stare for a long time without blinking and her arms were so strong that even a strong man could not move them a little.

To conclude and in support of my afterthought, achievements through practice are always convincing. A person who is born clever can never surpass one who constantly practices.

{{Dedicated to the 2 coyotes that inspired this piece: one that crossed the street in front of me on my drive to work in the morning and one that crossed it on the way home (neither were killed). And to Debbie for allowing me a journey and a place to practice.}} Love, Sharon