The Coyote Tree

     A friend of mine recently posted a picture on Facebook of a tree out in the middle of a pasture.  There were two coyotes hanging from its branches and a sign referring to it as the hanging tree.  I have seen this tree, but when I saw it there were about ten coyotes hanging there.

     The posted picture created a very small storm of disapproval.  People were appalled at such a vulgar, angry display.  I found myself, strangely, on the other side of the argument.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am not condoning the actions of the farmer involved (whom I know), but I am not condemning them either.  After living on the farm for twenty seven years and participating in the daily struggle to produce a good, marketable crop of lambs or calves I find that my old city attitudes have shifted.

     Like most of my city counterparts, I imagined that all farms consisted of sunny meadows full of frolicking sheep and happy cows.  I loved to eat a good steak or fry up some bacon, but somehow my mind didn’t connect happy farm animals to my plate full of juicy protein.  Happy farm animals lived so that people could enjoy their cuteness and occasionally feed them and pet them. People certainly were not going to eat them.

      It’s not that I didn’t know the source of my burger, it’s just that I chose not to consider it.  Living on a farm changed all of that.  On the farm, I began to face up to the fact that the cute little animals trotting along behind their mamas would one day be sold for food.  I lived on the farm for several years before I would let myself consider this truth too closely.

     Then my boys raised 4-H animals and I watched them grow attached to their four-legged  friends.  And, I watched them mourn when those same friends, after winning some money and ribbons, were loaded onto a stock trailer which pulled off into the sunset, heading towards a feed yard and eventually a butcher’s shop somewhere.

     It was during our third season of raising and selling fair animals that my attitudes began to shift.  In the first years, I cried, too.  But, then it occurred to me that humans have to eat, and we simply cannot do it without something else dying.  Even if we are vegetarians, eating only organically raised produce, a bug will die somewhere as the crop is harvested.  Why are we mourning only the cute furry things?

     In fact, everything must kill something else in order to keep on living.  It is a truth that has been lost as generations of eaters pluck their dinners from the sterile well-lit aisles of a grocery store.  Here on the farm, we don’t have the luxury of ignoring the source of our sustenance and the death that is an inevitable by-product of our eating.

     What does that have to do with coyotes hanging in a tree?  It turns out, everything.  Everything dies.  That’s the truth that we learn living on the farm.  Coyotes are top level predators.  They don’t die very often, unless the one predator above them, man, does the killing.  Coyotes kill indiscriminately and it’s not always because they are hungry.  Any farmer who’s seen a field full of neck-slashed lambs can tell you that coyotes are hit and run killers.  Thus, one farmer who has witnessed too much of this senseless killing and the effect it’s had on his income, chooses to hang the coyotes--symbolically saying, “enough is enough.”

     This farmer is not deranged.  He is angry, and rightfully so.  The coyote tree is simply an expression of that anger and frustration.  Since I’ve lived here, I’ve seen at least ten farmers give up raising sheep because of overwhelming coyote losses.  They’ve tried donkeys, guard dogs and llamas and if they were able to keep their sheep in a small acreage and had a small flock, then they could enjoy some level of protection.  But, most farmers in this county turn their sheep out to pasture in the summer.  Pasture on the sides of mountains, out of sight of the house.  Usually the flock splits up.  A guard animal would have to choose one group, leaving the other group vulnerable.

     If National Geographic came to our mountains and photographed the coyote tree, it would appear in the magazine with a caption that appropriately captured the frustrations of a group of people who are watching their way of life disappear one coyote-killed sheep at a time.  Lambs dying so that we all can eat are one kind of death that we accept on the farm.  Lambs dying in our fields because a coyote went on a killing spree are not.  Sometimes it seems that modern society has forgotten how to distinguish between the two.

The Breakfast Merry-Go-Round

     Feeding the animals their morning breakfast should not be rocket science, but this morning it is.  I take the calf bottle out to the shed and hang it in the holder and then turn to the ewe, who has followed me in.  She wants her grain, but what she really wants is the calf’s grain, which I haven’t put out yet.  I persuade her to leave him and follow me back outside where I dump her grain in a pan.  The chickens come running.  I don’t want them eating her grain because it’s rather expensive, so I dip some cornmeal out and call, “Chick, chick, chick.”  The ewe comes running.  I chase her back to her dish which is full of red hens.  I chase them out and herd them over to the cornmeal, which I’ve poured in two straight lines along the ground.  The chickens settle in and I turn to the dogs.  A little kibble in the morning helps keep them warm.  When I pour Luke’s in his pan, the ewe hears the rattle and comes running.  I have inadvertently locked Luke in the shed with the calf, so I shoo the ewe back to her grain and hurry inside to free Luke so he can eat his breakfast before the ewe does. 

     When I go back out, the ewe is licking up the last of the dog food and the chickens are pecking up what she has dribbled on the ground.  I hurry over and pour Rex his breakfast and step down to the creek to dip out some water for him.  While I am down over the edge of the bank I hear him bark.  Climbing back up, I see Luke eating Rex’s food.  I chase him back to his empty bowl with a promise of more food if he’ll just be patient.  He wags and follows me back to the shed where the calf has finished his bottle.  I dip out some grain for him.  As I’m pouring it in his trough, I hear the door behind me rattle.  The ewe pushes through and I grab her by her neck wool and drag her back out the door.  The calf follows and I chase him around the shed twice before I manage to get him back inside.  The ewe has taken advantage of my distraction and slipped in to finish his grain. I pour him some more, muscle her back out, and cross back through the shed to grab a flake of hay for her.  When I go back outside, she is just finishing the chickens’ cornmeal.  Meanwhile, they have scuttled over and are eating out of the horse trough, where I had dumped some grain earlier.

     Luke has watched all of this with interest as he waits for me to refill his bowl.  I drop a little food in it for him, but the ewe runs up and pushes him out of the way.  I give up and head back to the house.  Luke runs behind me and slips in the door.  I had placed a pan of leftover gravy in the kitchen for the cats and apparently he could smell it from over at the shed.  He scatters the cats and they hiss and complain, so I shoo them outside. They have a bowl of dried food on the porch and they’ll just have to be satisfied with that.  Except it’s empty.  There’s a blue jay perched on the edge of it laughing at me as he swallows the last bite.  

Playing With the Professionals

     I have been a farm-wife for twenty-eight years and in the high pressure sport of livestock relocation I feel like I’m now qualified to play with the professionals.  I can block a bull, I can screen a sheep, and I can double team a determined calf.  I am my husband’s best female rookie, so when Joe was at work the other day and a call came in from a fellow interested in recruiting one of our rams, I volunteered to go down to the other farm and break it to the young buck that he was being traded.

     The ram was hanging out with his friends behind the farmhouse.  With a little help from an assistant, I brought all of the sheep into a huddle.  Game on!  I started shouting encouragement and making hand motions to transmit my intentions, but my star ram was more interested in his wooly female fan club than my frantic coaching.  Finally, we agreed on a fast break, and with a little pressure from the sidelines, the flock trotted down to the loading pens.  Then, I separated the buck out for the trade and asked the wooly cheerleaders to leave.  They departed, demonstrating a few high kicks on the way out.

     The buck showed his displeasure in losing his cheerleaders by intentionally fouling my assistant.   I moved him onto the sidelines, confining him in a narrow chute until he got his temper under control.  The cheerleaders, who were now three fences away, kept calling for him to be put baaaaa-ck in the game.  LeBron the Buck looked through the fences separating him from the girls and, with a six foot vertical leap from a standing position that would make any coach proud, he cleared it.  I shouted something that should have resulted in a technical foul as the buck took two running steps and cleared the second one. One fence remained.  Before I could react, LeBron soared over the last fence without touching the rim, and trotted out to the cheerleaders who welcomed him with a victory song…”Na, na, na, na.   Na, na, na, na.  Hay, hay, hay! Welcome Baaack.”

     The gentleman who was attempting to recruit LeBron promised to come back another day.  I nodded, but secretly thought that he might want to make a different trade.  No coach wants a player he can’t control.  But, the man did return and this time the pros, Joe and Justin, managed to pull off a win, controlling Le Bron the Buck until he was safely loaded.

   The next night, we got a phone call.  As soon as he was unloaded, LeBron demonstrated his vertical jump again, clearing a fence and loping to the goal: his new flock of wooly cheerleaders.  We understand that they were delighted to welcome him and since that’s what the big bucks are for, everyone is happy with the trade.