A few days prior to the anniversary date of my twenty-ninth year as a letter carrier for Canada Post, I began a new route. The territory contained some ground I had covered before. Two blocks of small businesses had been excised and twelve blocks of residential had been appended. The old route had measured fourteen kilometres and I used a pedometer on the new one. My calves began to cramp at fifteen kilometres and there were still over twenty blocks to go.
Six days shy of the anniversary, which would occur on the twenty-ninth of October, I was heading West on 29th Ave. and spied an adult female coyote. She stood in the crossroads a block away on 28th Ave. After checking me out, she walked off to the West. There was a tall young man about a half block away fingering a cell-phone, who appeared to be following her.
When I reached the end of my Westward run, I saw her heading East with the young man still tailing her from a half block distance. I walked over to speak with him. He was about twenty years old, tall and working nearby on some residential construction. He had phoned the police, the animal control authorities and was keeping visual contact. The coyotess was keeping the normal coyote safe buffer distance of about twelve yards between her and the young man..
“I'm an Inuit,” he said, “I know coyotes. She found an apple tree and a house with chickens. She will stay in this area.”
“I'm a Cherokee-Swede,” I said, “Coyotes know me. This is my territory. This is also where I earn my apples.”
The coyotess stood forty feet away in the middle of the road munching on a hard green Granny Smith apple and listening to our every word as her ears rotated in one hundred and thirty-five degrees. Her mamma hadn't raised a fool.
I worked for four blocks to my turnaround on Cambie St. and began the Westward jaunt down 28th Ave. Way down at the end of this run, I saw the young man at work putting some underground sprinkler tubing in the front yard of a new house. The coyotess was gone. I stopped to ask him if the authorities had come and collared the girl.
“No. They said that if she's not showing aggression, they will not catch her.”
When I got down two blocks East of where that fellow was working, it was time for my sandwiches. I was in the six hundred block of 28th Ave. and it was on the crest of a North-South ridge that runs through the geography of the city. It was a fine Indian Summer day with achingly beautiful cobalt skies offset by gold and jasper leaves of the tree-lined streets. I sat on the North-side curb and dug into my food bag.
As I poured out some warm coffee, I saw the coyotess. She was directly across the street, under a small maple tree. She was just licking her teeth after having had another delicious Granny Smith and circling a spot where she obviously intended to lay down. This was noteworthy, as we were only twenty-five feet apart and it was broad daylight.
I ate my sandwiches with the gusto of a starved wolf and began on my daily apple, a Gala. Now it was smoke time. I began to ponder many things that had been working their way from my deeps into my shallows. I pondered how much longer I would or should walk the streets delivering mail. I pondered the changing landscape of my city. I pondered the fact that after twenty-nine years I was earning two dollars an hour less than when I began, after adjusting for inflation. I pondered the fact that everything in my view would sooner than later, be razed to the ground and rebuilt four stories deep. I pondered the fact that the “walking time” portion of the Canadian letter-carrier's job had doubled since I began. I wondered if this would prove to be my last route.
All the while, I watched the coyotess. She looked a little worn out and her fur was still in summer mode. She worked her large ears, incessantly monitoring every sound. I could see that she had learned to filter large batches of repetitious city ambience, just as I had. I named her, Apple Annie. She kept looking West as if waiting for something to appear from that horizon.
I told her in a soft voice that since we were having lunch together we may as well sit together. I rose up and crossed the street. I sat down on the other side of the little maple and could have easily reached over and stroked the fur between her ears. We were both leaving the realm of the noteworthy and tiptoeing into the extraordinary.
Apple Annie was a normal wild animal with her full instincts intact. She had a small circular wound on her left buttock which had mostly healed and she walked with no limp. She wasn't drooling, mad or dazed. Her teeth were clean and shiny, her eyes were as bright as the Korean lady’s at the Sky Train coffee bar. Her pads were sound and her nails were straight and strong.
There was one thing amiss that I noticed as soon as I sat beside her. Annie was tired. The girl was staying awake only by Herculean effort. I knew that feeling well. After every Post Office restructure, a letter-carrier works about two weeks of twelve hour shifts and there is much to monitor if one is to cope. I rolled another smoke and sang her a little Cherokee song I had learned from a Walela recording. I told her that I would take an extra fifteen minutes on my lunch break and watch over her.
She kept looking Westward but soon her eyelids drooped. I continued to talk softly and her head nodded just like mine used to do when I had math class in Louisiana in a school with no air-conditioning. Apple Annie fought sleep and resumed her vigil, just like her maker intended and her mother had taught her. I reassured her that I wouldn't let anyone harm her.
Across the street I saw an old customer keenly watching us from his living room window. His eyes were wide. He was a nice old Irishman, whom I had spoken to many times when I was his mailman on the old route. He had met the English Queen while on a tour with some Canadian war veterans to the beaches of France and had never gotten over it. One of the entourage was Smokey Smith, the eldest vet then living. The man was wheelchair bound and was a chain smoker. As the august gentlemen stood on the windy strand remembering the gunfire, the Queen's escorts brought the old lady down a dune to address those assembled.
According to Mr. L., Smokey ditched his cigarette when he saw her coming. Queen Elizabeth walked right up to him and told him to go ahead and light up another one. That example of “noblesse oblige” was the cat's pyjamas, as far as Mr. L. could see. We had also spoken of raccoons and the old man had related to me a story of trying to reunite four kits with their mother after their tree nest had fallen in a windstorm.
He had shown me the spot on his yard where it all had happened. He had donned a welder's mask and gloves and tried to scoop them up one at a time and ferry them to the other side of a retaining wall where the mother waited. His Irish accented description of the ensuing caterwauling mayhem, left me in stitches for several days. He had learned from this experience to have a great respect for wild animals of any size.
As our discussion of animals widened, Mr. L told me that I was the only man he'd ever met, save one, who knew of the danger of the black mamba. We had been trading snake stories one afternoon after I had nearly stepped on a seven foot python in the next block. I told him that it was big enough to kill a man but posed no danger to me when sunning in the lawn with a full belly. I went on to tell him that there was one snake that was never safe and it was called the black mamba. It was the only snake I knew of that will stalk a human with the intent to kill. In other words, it will kill what it cannot eat.
In Africa, people carry bundles of stuff on their heads if they have to pass under trees, as a protection against this animal. Contrary to almost every other snake, the mamba can raise its head off the ground to the height of an average man's eyes when at rest. It can also move forward with its head elevated well up off the deck. It is very long, has a small circumference, can out pace a man and climb like a monkey.
The old Irishman told me that he had an English military friend who loved to trek in South Africa. It was from that man that he had first learned about the mamba. His friend had once spotted a mamba crossing a dirt road while on a long hike. He set his compass due East immediately, marched four miles off of his course, then marched four miles North and finally four miles West to rejoin his original course. Such were the necessary precaution taken by those who know.
Mr. L. related the story of a circus that had come to Vancouver many years before I was born. The gypsies and carnies had set up the show along the railroad track that runs near Arbutus Street. The main attractions were a very large elephant and a huge anaconda. The snake was named Methuselah and it's great size was attributed to its incredible antiquity.
My customer was a boy at the time had been taken to see the circus and was especially awed by the torpid monster snake. After a week, the circus men pulled up their tent pegs and moved on. A curious article appeared in the Vancouver Sun newspaper the following day. It so happened that when the animals were being readied for transportation, it was discovered that Methuselah was missing.
The anaconda was never found and Mr. L. said that he had added a new clause onto his nightly prayers after that. Today, that location is known for its feral rabbit population and for the strange absence of homeless people, who seem to prefer the dirty concrete sidewalks of downtown over the beautiful black-berry bushes, tall grass, shady trees and ditches.
While I mused on those stories, I continued to speak softly to Apple Annie and she looked directly at me, studying my face. She eventually put her head between her paws, closed both eyes and relaxed her radar ears. I’d never seen anything like it. I turned toward the Irishman's window. He made a gesture of astonishment. Two Japanese ladies hurrying down the sidewalk. When they got close enough to see that Annie wasn't a wolf nor a dog, they pulled out their camera phones and began to squeal with excitement. Annie rose after having had only a five minute rest and walked off to the West.
The next day, when I reached a midpoint on the route where I intended to have my meal, I sat up my lunch things on a low cement wall that ran along under a massive laurel hedge. There was a red mail box standing next to a grey relay box. I had three big bags of mail in that relay. I had just poured my coffee when Apple Annie appeared from an alley across the street.
She walked up and lay down next to the mail box, munching on another Granny Smith. I sat about three feet away on the low wall and ate my sandwich. She continued looking West. In about fifteen minutes, a red truck swerved to a sloppy stop in the middle of the road. A bearded man and his chubby wife bailed out and started taking pictures of Annie with their cell phones.
The man came up close and his wife stayed about twenty feet away, as her maker intended and her mamma had taught her. The man squatted on his haunches and started making the sounds one would make when calling a dog. Annie looked at him and then looked at me.
“Is it your coyote?” the man asked.
“Nope.”
“Are you feeding it?”
“Nope. She likes Granny Smith apples and fresh chicken, while I prefer Gala apples and my wife's pork chop sandwiches. We are just having lunch together, that’s all.”
“Damn!”
The man kept making kissing sounds, extending his hand and snapping his fingers. Annie rose and walked off to the West. He took one last photo of her departure and drove away.
When I reached Mr. L.'s house later that day, he was waiting in his yard.
“So, you are back on this route?”
“Yep. There was a restructure and more calls were added to it, so the delivery times have changed.”
“Michael, now tell me my boy, is that your coyote?”
“Nope.”
“Are you feeding it?”
“Nope. She has her own apples. I can scarcely feed myself enough calories to do this new improved route.”
“Her mother mustn't have taught her to kill. It's extraordinary! I saw her literally go to sleep two feet away from you.”
“Oh, she knows how to kill chickens, don't fool yourself. That's her night-time job.”
The following day, I didn't see Apple Annie and I haven't seen her since. My Irish friend inquired once more about her welfare and I told him of her disappearance. He shook his head and said it had been an altogether extraordinary week. I spoke of his old friend Methuselah. I'm part Irish and I couldn't resist the joke.
There are few truly precious things in this world. There are even fewer priceless things. On my trail, I have been fortunate enough to encounter and to be cognizant of one or two, thus far. Near the top of my small list is the unsolicited trust of one living creature, freely bestowed upon another. Particularly the trust of a female or that of a child, extended to an adult male. Above that, the trust of a wild creature, extended to a different species. Thank-you Apple Annie, for your trust. Vaya con Dios. Do you remember Algeciras?
My taxi driver had this to say, when I told him the story later in the week, riding to my route, “Mikee, der are two on-lee poss-bill-tees por dis kotee uncowntur. May be she bas joor rel-tuv coming to bisit from in-nudder life.”
“What's the other possibility?”
“May be dat dis kotee know joo are holi.”
“Or maybe she was waiting for me to drop my very last letter.”
“I do not tink dat. She bas telling somting por yoo.”
So, there are as many explanations as there are traditions, religions and expectations. I have my own interpretation of these unusual events. There were hard questions on my mind during that coyote week in particular. I was seeking clarity and confirmation of my own inchoate decisions. Apple Annie provided exactly what I sought.
I simply had to remember that Creator had made her a Trickster. She had always been looking to the West and always walked away to the West. She couldn't help it. West is the direction of Introspection and the sunset. It was likely the direction from which she had been shot or bitten on the flank. The East is the direction of New Beginnings.
Thus, in her infallibly contrarian way, my coyotess had made it abundantly clear that I was indeed on my last route after thirty years of walking. I forwarded my resignation letter the following week and never looked back.
fin