Peace at the Watering Hole

Coyote photographed earlier this year in Rocky Mountain National Park.


It’s easy enough to make a case for climate change in northeast Ohio this summer. We’re going through one of our longer periods of extended hot weather. Anything above 90 degrees is a big deal around here. We’ve had a month of it. Television stations, nightly, cover the subject of summer heat in the city as if it didn’t just happen yesterday.
Even with last night’s rain the thermometer was bumping against 80 degrees at 7 a.m. this morning. I opted to get my bike ride out of the way early to beat the heat. Little did I realize, the heat had already won the competition before I even had my shoes on.
The bike trail was relatively cool, at least in the shady spots. Rain puddles dotted the asphalt in the shady spots as well, adding a bit of challenge—unless you’re an eight-year-old kid who goes looking for puddles to ride through. As I neared my turnaround point, I noticed a large, dark shape in the shadows at the middle of the trail. I slowed a bit when I realized I was looking at two coyotes, drinking from a puddle. When I was about 50 feet away, the one on the left looked up at me, took another drink, then both bolted into the nearby woods.
I was at the spot where they had been in a matter of seconds, yet I could not see them in the woods. Great stealth and camouflage, I thought.
I continued to my turn-around point about 100 yards further up the trail. I made a quick turn, pumped by this close encounter of the furred kind—the reason many of us head into the wilderness. Okay, a bike trail in semi-suburbia is not exactly the wilderness. Fortunately, some of the wilderness is coming to us these days.
I immediately focused on the spot where the coyotes had been. I saw a small shape now huddled over the same puddle. It was an opossum. It could not have been three minutes between the two sightings. And while coyotes tend to prey on smaller rodents, I suspect that opossum is sometimes on the menu.
The opossum did not play possum. No panic on its part. I slowed nearly to a stop as I drifted by, giving it plenty of space on the six-foot-wide path. It watched me glide by, maybe unsure of what this colorful creature was. Its attitude was the same as we might assume when viewing an alien from outer space. Out of morbid curiosity I looked around for the coyotes. I wondered if I’d witness what I was sure would be the opossum’s last drink of water.
Nothing happened. Unlike human coming’s and going’s, when nothing happens in the animal world, it’s news.