Coywolves or humans?

Columbus Day Weekend


Peak foliage.


Friday

It is an experience to walk to your outhouse, the only shelter unaffected by weather during your two week hiatus, chaperoned by your husband because you are nervous to walk the short path in the woods, in the dark, alone. The path is dark illuminated only by your headlight.  It is bumpy with rocks and roots.  You trust that when you unzip the shelter spiders, bats, or rodents will not jump out at you.  You hope there is dry toilet paper and that when you lift the seat up a snake will not come out and give you a surprise "HELLO!".

The shelter is temporary, but in truth you wonder if you really need a more permanent structure.  This Cabela’s Delux  Shower Tent seems to have withstood weather that the other structures at the campsite could not.  This of course could be more a result of the area being sheltered but it is a testament to the design of it.  It shelter's  Scott's outhouse design.

We leave a tent light in there and luckily on this occasion it was working.  There were no spiders, rodents, bats, or snakes waiting for me.  The toilet paper was dry.  I settled in to do my business and told Scott he could head back up to the kids and fire.

It was quiet and peaceful.  My fear was going away, no animals in sight or sound. And then I heard:

"Yip, yip, hooowl, yip, yip, howl!"

I yell back to Scott and the kids.  "Do you hear that?"

"Yes, yip, yip, hoooowl!   Those are humans....", Scott shouts back while continuing his, "Yip, yip, hooowl!", with the kids echoing him, all of them laughing.

Then I say,  "That is not a human!"

Next a chorus of "Yip, Yip, howl,"  with phase shift frequencies start to sing in an area that seems below Moose's den.

I start to become afraid again, and decide it is a good idea to finish my business and head back up close the the fire.  I zip the shelter back up and bark commands to my family to stop howling because we were not hearing humans, they had to be coyotes.  Scott was convinced otherwise and this was probably a good time not to argue about how the kids were listening to him and not me.  I didn't want to scare them.

After I put the breaks on my own family's howling chorus the pack of coyotes, which apparently are really coywolves in VT, quieted down and we stopped hearing them.  Thank God!


Here is the shelter and outhouse seat built in July.

Me sitting by the fire, warming up, and celebrating the Quiet around me.

Found this video on Coyote Yips by Janet Kessler.  It wqas reminiscent of the types of calls we heard.  Definitely coywolf and not human.