Three a.m. and the room was dark save for weak moonlight through the north window. The little wolves had moved into the corn stubble and their cries had jarred me awake again. Technically they’re coyotes, but we call them song dogs. The song dogs had moved into the corn stubble to mouse and their cries ricochet around the room.
The blue Russian cat, at the foot of the bed, he had the wild eyes then. The moon was just bright enough to see his body curled against my feet. When I stirred, his shape melted and reformed with a light thump on the floor. He slunk to the door, belly low to the ground, eyes like black moons. I rose and cracked the door; watched him snake into the night. Some think that you shouldn’t let your cat out when the song dogs are crying, but my tom hears something in those howls that seems important to indulge.
There are a lot of reasons why the song dogs sing. Seasonal and diet patterns. Lunar phase. Social status. The music plays a role in territorial maintenance and family-unit spacing, signals the sex and motivation of the caller. In one study, scientists documented 11 distinctive vocalization patterns, each with its own behavioral context. In another, they noted that barks were used to convey alarm or agonistic intentions, while howls were used to convey more general information over long distances. That the songs often contain barks and howls gives some sense of how rich and detailed this language is. This is who I am, this is where I am, this is what I’m doing, this is how I’m feeling.
Some people say they sound like aliens when they cry. They hold the notes in the back of their throat, and when the sound wrenches free it falls out of their muzzles in haphazard patterns. To make a sound like a wolf, you howl through a pursed mouth, your tongue flat, your lips like an O. To make a sound like a coyote you open your mouth as wide as it’ll go, curl your tongue back on itself, then push the sound through your tongue while contorting your jaw and lips. Sometimes it sounds like a real wolf and sometimes it sounds like a woman screaming and sometimes it sounds like wind through the eaves of an old farmhouse.
Most of us have a simian reaction when they hear the coyotes sing. Our neck hair stands up as our bodies try to look bigger, which is funny because we lost our fur millions of years ago and ironic because coyotes do the same thing. But then that human consciousness bit kicks in and we recognize the sound as a source of strange beauty. Then what? Rest our chins on our pillows and stare off through the window, scanning the meadows, eyes like black moons. Maybe we elbow our partner and find they’re already wide awake, face full of wonder on good nights, or restless, if life is in a Virginia Wolff way.
I can never see the little wolves through the window because they like to run along the meadow’s edge with the shadows of the trees. Plus my eyes aren’t good enough in the low light. But I can track them by their sound and imagine them working the hedgerow, pawing the mice from beneath the round bales, skirting up and down the sides of the snow-covered manure pile. Eventually, I stop looking and lie back down and just let the sound dominate the room. Open the window a crack, maybe, to smell the cold air, to feel the outside on my skin.
When the song dogs wake you, you have 3 a.m. thoughts, which are never easy. Sometimes you think about work. Or her. Or him. Or money troubles. Sometimes we notice the webbing that keeps us in bed while our tom cats, unencumbered, heed the call of the wild and run headlong into the night.
But on the good nights you’re still half asleep. And the sound just rolls over you. And you’re soon off again, hunting the hedgerows out in Butternut Gutter, or singing soulful songs on a veranda with the disappeared. And your lady, she’s peaceful too, off running with these little wolves through her own dreamscape, closed eyes aflutter with every howl, lips parted slightly to reveal the hint of a canine tooth.
“Wa-ya-ha.” The coy-wolf. Hear them now as the down blanket and the faint stars and the night air amalgamate with your dreams.
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