Nature Calls

“They’re here,” Jeanine whispered into her recorder. Crouched beside her in the blind, Tom kept his eyes on the images transmitted from the motion-sensitive cameras they’d planted along the game trail. After three weeks of tantalizing glimpses, one camera had drawn a crowd.

“There’s Mutt and Jeff,” Tom murmured. Jeanine trembled with excitement. The big gray wolf and the scrawny gray-yellow coyote had been caught on camera early on. She’d thought they were mates at first, but both appeared to be male. She’d since observed them hunting and playing and chasing down females together. In her five years filming Nature’s denizens, she’d never seen, read of, or heard about any such pairing as this.

She’d already spent the check from NatGeo in her mind. And it was a hefty one.

“Six wolves,” Tom said, “and one coyote. Looks like they’re all male. Bachelor pack? And what's a coyote doing with wolves?"

“I don’t know,” Jeanine said distractedly. She wondered how well the Emmy for Best Documentary would fit in her hands.

“Look. They’ve found the camera.”

The wolves sidled up to the camera. Their nostrils worked. The lens acquired a wet smear from an inquisitive nose. The pack stepped back, but continued to stare at the camera.

“This is weird,” Tom said. “I know I hid the camera and camouflaged my scent. They shouldn’t even know it’s there.”

“They warned us Talbot’s Peak is strange. The animals don’t behave normally.”

Something was happening out there. Jeanine edged closer to the screen.

Then they saw it. Tom swore. Jeanine gasped. “I don’t believe this.”

# # #

Three weeks ago

“Dog!” Sal came running up, all hyper as usual, jolting Harry out of yet another perfectly good nap. “Dog, you gotta come see this.”

Harry got up, yawned, shook the pine needles out of his fur and shifted to human form. “Dude. Pants.”

“Screw pants. There’s two monkeys sticking cameras on trees down by the deer yard. I think they’re doing a nature show.”

“In the deer yard?” That got Harry’s attention. “That’s Hancock turf. How’d humans get past the patrols?”

“The Hancocks are your family. You tell me. The point is, we’ve just been handed the opportunity of a lifetime. What do we do about it?”

Harry scratched behind his ear. Only a coyote would see a human invasion of shifter territory as an opportunity. “Better show me first,” he said.

In wolf and coyote form they trailed the pair and marked the locations of the cameras. They followed them back to their base camp, a pair of tents and several nervous horses holed up beside a stream at the edge of Brandon Wayne’s ranch. They retreated a safe distance and shifted for speech. “Think Wayne let ‘em in?” Harry asked.

“Doubt it. Your alpha either. Well, we probably shouldn’t kill them. That could lead to a total mess.”

“It’s already a total mess. I’ll have to tell the pack where the cameras are. Scat, we’ll have to tell everybody. If they catch somebody shifting on film, this’ll turn into Monkey Central. The FBI we can deal with, but zoologists?” Harry shook his head. “We have to do something. Any ideas?”

Sal grinned and pointed his thumbs at his chest. “Dog. Coyote.”

# # #

“Does that coyote,” Tom said in a shaky voice, “have a camera?”

He couldn’t. He couldn’t, but he did. Using his teeth and paws, he was taking video of the pack. The wolves struck poses in front of both his and the hidden camera. Two wolves held up a cardboard sign in their teeth. It read Hi, Mom!

Then, at some body-language signal, the pack approached Jeanine’s camera. As one, they lifted their legs and took aim.

# # #

Jeanine and Tom hurried back to their camp to find the canvas tents in shreds, the horses gone, their notebooks clawed to confetti and soaked in urine, and their hard drives wiped. While they were rooting despondently through the wreckage several men on horseback rode up. “Brandon Wayne,” the horseman in the lead introduced himself. “You’re on private property.”

Jeanine gathered up her bravado. It was all she had left. “We were told these are state lands.”

“No, these are Wayne lands. That mountain you’ve been tromping around on belongs to the Hancock Corporation. Neither of us appreciate trespassers. There’s some beautiful public game lands ten miles southwest of here. We’ll see that you make it safely to the road.”

The cowboys herded the humans and their skimpy bits of salvage out of camp. Hidden up a nearby tree, Sal caught it all on video.

# # #

From “Naturalists: Exploiting Nature” broadcast on Talbot’s Peak Cable Access Channel 11

“Sometimes the good guys win one, folks. Sometimes we make it through the infestation with nothing more than some bad film to show the humans were here. We dodged a bullet this time, but we need to keep our eyes open and our wits on red alert, because as long as they stay nosy and have cameras, this is bound to happen again.”

Video shows two humans, one male and one female, trudging up Highway 15 past a sign reading Rocky Top State Park, next left.

“Millions of years ago, so their stories go, the monkeys came down out of the trees and started walking around on two legs. News flash, apes. You left, but we didn’t, and we don’t take kindly to you flea-pickers coming back to play Candid Camera with us. Let this be a lesson to you. Stay the hell out of our trees.”

Video fades to black.

This broadcast was made possible through contributions from the Hancock Corporation, the Wayne Ranch, and from viewers like you.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

She roared up to Dante’s on her usual night and in her usual reckless fashion, on a tricked-out Harley so smokin’ with chrome it would make the most Hellacious of Angels drool with envy. A knot of leather-clad bikers loitered out front; they hastily cleared a spot for her. Her name was Jeanie O’Hare, but she preferred to go by Honey Bunny. No timid cottontail, she: of Texas jackrabbit extraction, she was wild and she was dangerous, on her bike and off. Males dissed her and her powerful kickboxing feet at their peril.

The Calhoun boys waited outside for her arrival, also per usual. Nate and Donny – better known in their pack as Nipper and Yipper – had a standing bet with Honey. “Tonight’s the night,” Nipper said to his brother. “Tonight we score.”

“In your dreams.” Honey grinned. They always forgot just how sharp a hare’s hearing could be. She lifted off her helmet and shook out her flowing blonde tresses. Every male in the parking lot zeroed in on the performance. Let ‘em look, she thought. Some lucky pup would get to do more than look tonight. She loved to get down and dirty, and always with a carnivore … or two. Hoppin’ and boppin’ with a partner who might eat her at any second added spice to the encounter.

But first they had to earn their way into Honey’s bed. Every game had rules, and hers were tricky. But then, hares were tricky beasts. Probably why the Calhouns were so hot to land her. Tricks, hot sex, and no ties afterwards. What coyote could resist?

The boys confronted her right outside the door. “We want another rematch,” Nipper said.

“First give me some sugar.” Honey dug her fingers into Nipper’s thick black hair and dragged his head down to hers in a scalding kiss. He lived up to his nickname by nibbling on her lip. Yipper shouldered in next. He was a tongue man, and plunged his dipstick down her throat like he was checking for oil. She wouldn’t mind a roll in the briar patch with either of them. But the game came first.

“You know the rules, boys,” she said. “We race to the old logging road and back. I win, I laugh in your face. You win, you’ve got my full attention for the evening. Who’s it going to be, Nip? You or your brother?”

“Screw that,” Nipper said. “Yip’s riding, but when he wins, you get both of us. We’ll work out the logistics afterwards.”

She studied them both doubtfully. “I don’t know, boys. Think you can keep up?”

“You’ve never been with a coyote, have you?”

“I meant your ride, boys. If all you’ve got is some little putt-putt, why should I even mount up?”

The coyotes sniffed indignantly and showed her their bike. It was only a Yamaha, scrawny as a geek next to her burly Harley, but it looked clean, and Honey knew Yipper had a magic touch with engines. Among other things. Leave it to these randy boys to pull in a ringer on her.

“All right, you’ve got yourself a race, but not until I’m ready. I came to hear the band. Which one of you gentlemen wants to escort me?”

“We’re coyotes,” Nipper said. “That pretty much scotches the gentlemen part. But hey, I’ll spring for drinks.”

I’ll bet you will, Honey thought with a mental smirk. Coyotes had a rep for playing fast and loose with the rules. Well, so did she. She stuck to the non-alcoholic side of the drink list. Wouldn’t do to get tipsy with these two around. With coyotes, you had to keep on your toes.

She did allow Nipper to hang all over her on the dance floor, even during the fast numbers. He was one hot cutie and damn, was he limber. Same for his blondie brother. Someday, she mused, it might be worth her while to throw the race and take a Calhoun for a test drive.

Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen Yipper for at least twenty minutes.

“He’s checking the bike,” Nipper assured her. “What? You think we’d pull something shady?”

“In a heartbeat, sweetie.”

Nipper just shrugged and grinned at her. Seconds later Yipper horned in and finished the dance with her. He wasted no time in groping her ass. “There’s no cottontail back there,” she informed him.

“Just warning up for later.”

“We’ll see.” The music ended. “In fact, let’s see right now.”

Back in the parking lot Honey inspected her ride. It seemed untouched. Yipper strapped on his helmet and mounted up. Honey hopped onto the Harley’s seat. “Give me some sugar,” she ordered Nipper. “Just in case Yipper gets lucky.”

“You’re getting us both,” he reminded her, before he kissed her hard. He gave her a nip on her neck in lieu of a good luck. While he had her distracted Yipper kickstarted his Yamaha and roared off down the road.

“Oh, no fair,” she said on a laugh. Like it made any difference. Her mechanic dad had taught her everything he knew, and she’d picked up more on the road. There wasn’t a cycle in all of Montana that could outrun the Big Bopper. She revved the engine, confident she’d catch him in five minutes, ten at the most.

Nothing happened.

No growl of engines, no vibrations, nothing. Her bike made a whimper and just sat there. She was still sitting there with Nipper laughing beside her when Yipper pulled into the lot twenty minutes later. “Hey, where you been? I missed you.”

Honey hopped off the Bopper. “What did you do?”

Yipper and Nipper exchanged grins. “Well, you’re always demanding sugar from us.”

“So we gave you some.”

“In your gas tank.”

“Nothing in your rules says a race is cancelled just because a bike won’t start. Guess I won. Or we won. Or you won. Win win win.”

She looked from one to the other and started to laugh. She could get used to coyotes. “You’re paying for that engine.”

“Worth it,” they chorused.

“I’ve already got a room,” Nipper added. “In the morning we’ll flip a coin, see who calls AAA and who gets to take you to breakfast.”

“And between now and then?”

The coyotes leered at her. Honey leered back. Looked like she was in for a night of hard riding after all, and she wouldn't have it any other way.