Small Town Winter
The Source
An entire herd of coyotes went screaming by my house last night. I’m not kidding. It might have been a gaggle or a covey…still not sure what you call coyotes when they travel in packs, but at approximately 2 a.m. I heard their screams as they ran right through my front yard. Let’s be clear here...I don’t live in some frozen wilderness. My home, despite my crumbling back porch, will never be featured on the Discovery Channel. I live in Arenzville along with about 499 other mostly German souls and we are civilized.. at least on non-Burgoo days. Most of us have even learned to pee indoors. Our little town tucked just beyond the northern edge of Morgan County is not some adventure park, but when the pickings get slim in the surrounding hillsides the coyotes come to town. It was a Wednesday night and Arenzville’s garbage pickup is on Thursdays. Somehow they know this. Much has been said (and some of it true) about the idyllic lifestyle of America’s small towns. If peace and quiet ranks high on your list of needs then small towns are still a wonderful place to be, but when winter weather and numbing temperatures hit the Midwest everything gets compounded if you live in a village. I have friends from “the city” of Jacksonville who simply do not leave town between November and springtime. Everything beyond the city limits takes on the specter of wasteland. In fact, many of them regard simply driving out of town in any weather as a major expedition. If you live in a tiny village then even a shortage of butter and toilet paper necessitates what our city cousins consider a major undertaking. Sometimes the trip is made several times a day, no matter what the weather. But it’s the invasion of the wilderness that really sets small town living apart from taking up residence in a larger city. Last fall a six point buck deer trotted rather lost and forlorn down the main street of town. It was just dusk and the business at our local tavern had just begin to get its nightly buzz. The deer, apparently Methodist, passed the tavern and kept heading west. The sidewalk smokers in front of the tavern waved at him but the buck did not respond. I suspect he knew that the town was known for its coyotes and some of the smokers had that predatory look in their eyes. I get feathered visitors to my wintertime bird feeder that Audubon has yet to identify. Mutants, perhaps. Or maybe species that have simply hidden out in the Arenzville bluffs for so long that we’ve never noted their existence. If these bands of marauding wildlife had any sense they’d know that FOIT cards are distributed to small town residents along with their birth certificates and being far distant from two county seats the chances of being arrested for shooting squirrels off your front porch are remote. I think we may be the only municipality in the area where deer hunting extends inside the city limits. The goal is to aim carefully and try to avoid the kids on the ball diamond…especially the pitchers. It’s always hard to find good pitchers. I have a coon in my basement. Not a pet, and when I go down to meet him he’s never there. When I turn down the temperature for the night he becomes irritated and starts walking on top of my heat ducts in search of warmth. Last winter I hired a local kid to trap him but the effort failed. He caught a possum instead. I didn’t want the possum, I wanted the raccoon. My only hope is that the coon will manage to kill the neighbor’s cat that also manages to takes up residence every winter. Last night I think I heard them fighting. I hope that’s what they were doing. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind the coon so much if he didn’t irritate the cat. Coons don’t scream. Cats do. .. at least cats who run nose-to-nose with a heat-seeking raccoon. I ran nearly head-long into my coon one night as I pulled into my drive. He was large…perhaps 700 pounds, although the shock of seeing him might have skewed my perspective a bit. We only spoke briefly and did most of the talking. He seemed disinterested. Great. Not only do I have a vicious animal living in my basement, but I bore him. So if you think that this winter has been especially tough to endure, perhaps you can find some solace in the fact that you may live in a city where the deer and the antelope don’t play quite as promiscuously. Yes, I know that Jacksonville has the occasional critter drift into town but at least they don’t take up permanent residence in the wintertime. On the other hand, Arenzville is amazingly free of stray dogs. I think they’re afraid of the coyotes and coons.