In Yellowstone, it’s never
unusual for a car to halt smack in the middle of the road. Nor it
is unusual for a car’s driver to stand in the road, gawking at
wildlife. It is unusual for a driver to be shouting — at me.
I was riding my bike on Yellowstone’s northeast entrance
road, zoning out. I’d been pedaling for over an hour, finally
zipping down a long and steep hill, and I’d let the rolling, rocky
landscape slip by while only paying half-attention to what was in
front of me. This is always my favorite part of bicycling, when
both muscles and brain get a well-deserved break.
“You
know, there’s a coyote behind you!” shouted the man. Startled, I
peeked over my shoulder, and yes, a reddish-gray coyote was
streaking along behind me, matching my 20-mile-per-hour speed like
a household dog out for an afternoon run with his master.
Even after a summer volunteering for the National Park Service in
Yellowstone, where I routinely encountered coyotes during my
activities, my knowledge of coyote etiquette in this situation was
lacking. This was no household pet, though I had seen this coyote
before. I’d noticed that he spent days trotting alongside
slow-moving cars where tourists with cameras hung out their
windows. To coax him closer, some drivers of these cars offered
food, so this coyote had learned to expect a reward from the road,
and now was not shy about approaching cars or people.
But
why was this coyote running after me? I remembered an unopened
energy bar in my jersey pocket, but discounted this as a motive for
his pursuit. For reasons unknown, my bicycle and I had incited this
coyote’s primal instinct to give chase. Was it because he
considered me prey? Or was he simply enjoying an afternoon run with
“the pack?” I wanted to believe he meant me no harm; nonetheless, I
was afraid.
I tightly U-turned toward the other side of
the man’s car in an effort to outrun the animal. Out of control, my
front wheel drifted off the road’s asphalt lip and onto the rocky
terrain. I tried to perform a Lance Armstrongesque move on the
dirt, but failed. The skinny tires, which clung tightly to the
road, lacked grip on the loose dirt, giving the wheels a
cartoon-like quality of frantic spinning that went nowhere.
The bike toppled to the ground — and only a few
feet away, there was the coyote. I remembered the advice that you
can always use your bike against a dog, placing it in front of
yourself. But my bike, forged from ultra-light aluminum and
carbon-fiber, seemed pretty puny as a barrier.
The man
who’d first warned me was now shouting, walking toward me while
flinging rocks in the direction of the coyote. I joined in on the
random firing, but the coyote seemed oblivious. Instead of
retreating, he performed a tentative advance-and-then-withdraw
dance, darting as much side-to-side as backwards. With stones
whizzing by around him, he eventually retreated into the sagebrush,
then across the road and up a hill. All the while, he7;d turn and
eyeball me.
My protector, ignoring the cars that had
stopped to investigate the action, ran back to the middle of the
road, still throwing rocks. He shouted: “You ride on! I’ll keep him
away!” Not a bad idea, I thought, and took off with thanks, though
as I glanced over my shoulder, I half-expected to see that coyote
jogging alongside my rear wheel. But no, he was silhouetted among
the sagebrush on top of the hill. Each time I looked back he seemed
to be staring at me, and I wondered again why he’d been such a
persistent companion.
Later that month, I got my courage
up and decided to cycle that stretch of road again. As I rode, I
scanned the hills until finally, I spotted him. He was on a hilly
stage, entertaining a passel of tourist paparazzi. I recognized his
tentative dance and curious rapport with the visitors, who kept
pressing closer. I stopped pedaling and watched the spectacle from
afar. It was clear that humans had encouraged his unusual behavior,
and if I rode any closer, I would just contribute to the problem. I
was afraid that already, his easy relationship with people ensured
that his time in the park would be a short one. I turned the bike
around and slowly pedaled home.
Christine
Dingman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). She writes in
Lakewood, Colorado.
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