Beyond the dog pen, out in the old field, the coyotes lay like reclining sphinxes. They were bold, out in the middle of the day. One of them, the dirty one, chewed on a rib bone and the other one snapped at a fly.
"Hey dog. You want to come out and play." The dirty one yipped.
Max the dog tucked his tail between his legs. He knew better than to talk to them, but he kept his eye on the coyotes, letting out a whine to let the human and anyone else know they were around. He had seen them work in teams, trap their prey, kill it, and disappear into the woods. A lone dog did not have a chance against them.
The dirty coyote began to yap. "Hey dog. You sick of all that canned food?" It flipped the rib bone in the air. "You need to get out of that cage. Come out and party. We got it all. Bones, ribs, you can raise a family out here."
The other coyote, the skinny one, joined in. "Best of all dog. No humans and no cages. You have the right to bare teeth." The problem was Max liked the humans and he enjoyed being fed.
Max continued to observe from inside his pen. The coyotes grew bored of taunting him and argued over ownership of the rib bone. Their argument crescendoed into a good old-fashioned coyote fight.
The snarling and barking brought out Max's human master from his wooden den. The human carried the earsplitting, steel tube-of- death. On seeing the metal tube, Max jumped into his doghouse. The human fired at the coyotes and they screamed and took off for the pines.
"Hey dog," a coyote yelled from the pine forest. "That human can't protect you forever."
Max's ears were ringing from the noise, and he yelled out from under the doghouse, "You want some more of this? Bring it on."
