coyotes, round 2

I think we all remember the great coyote attack of 2014. (You can read more about it here.) Ok, so it wasn't really so much an attack as it was a potential attack. But you can never be too sure out here. 

It's been all quiet on the Western front until the past couple of weeks when one coyote has started making the rounds again, trotting into the pasture every morning around 9:30 a.m. and trotting back out at about 9:40 a.m. when the heifers realized he was uncomfortably close and charged him. 

A couple of days ago, he upped his game and brought recruits (aka  his siblings) . . . who look strangely similar to the pups who ran up our road last summer. 

In other words . . . they're back! 

This year, however, Petunia and Colt are on it. Usually. 

Petunia spends most of the day sleeping, but Colt lets her know when the intruders arrive. It only takes her a few seconds to snap out of her sleepy haze before she's locked, loaded and on a mission to rid the world of injustice . . . and the pasture of coyotes. 

Can you spot the coyote in the upper right corner? 

Colt is kind of a chicken and won't run out to meet them (or maybe we'll give him the benefit of the doubt and just say that he's more interested in protecting the homestead), but he'll bark, which usually sets Petunia off even more. 

She sprints down the road as fast as she can, makes a hard right into the field entrance and tears across the field after those coyotes who usually make like bandits toward the tree line. 

So far, the coyotes have made it out alive. But I'm waiting for the day when the Colt-Petunia combo hem them in and don't let them off so easy. Or the heifers trample them. Or they just decide their mid-morning jaunt isn't so worth it anymore in this veritable farming minefield. 

Any of those will do.