Coyote Moon

“Come look”

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
9/3/07

I planned on getting a full night’s sleep the other night, but the moon, and our somewhat more local coyotes, had other ideas.

Full moons disrupt sleep patterns out here in the sticks more than they do in the city. The city is bright at night. The night sky over Los Angeles might only have a couple of dozen stars, and there are probably quite a few people who are totally unaware of the existence of the Milky Way. Down there, the moon is just another night light, one that isn’t even powerful enough to wash out the yellow light of the sodium street lights. Stop a typical Angelino and ask him what phase the moon is in, and he’ll probably give you a puzzled stare and back away from you slowly, wishing he had remembered to pack his .45. At best, he’s got you figured for an astrologer or some other kind of religious nut.

And of course, he won’t know squat about the moon. Why should he? Just another night light, and not a very impressive one. Doesn’t even drown out the billboards. Here, of course, it’s different. A moonless night is a night with a million stars in the sky, and the Milky Way a pearlescent band from horizon to horizon. People discover that yes, you can really see things by starlight, although not very well. You can see the snowy patches on the mountain, although not the mountain itself. On a moonless cloudy night, it is pitch dark. You can’t see your hand in front of your face, especially if your hand is not there to begin with.

When the moon is full, you can read by it. You can see dull green in the trees. It’s BRIGHT. You could drive down the highway without headlights, although just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean it’s a real good idea to actually do it. For one thing, there are many deer who wish to become one with your radiator grille. And when the moon is full, they are more active.

The moon makes a difference. People out in the rural areas usually know what phase it’s in. Even with curtains I find sleep to be a intermittent thing. My unconscious keeps noticing the glow from behind my eyelids and nudging me, telling me it’s daybreak and time to get up.

We are one with nature here, part of the wild rather than citified and apart from it.

So when I got woken up at ten to three by a series of yelps and yammers and screams from the local coyotes, I did what anyone attuned to nature would do: I sat up, listened attentively, thought, “Oh, shut the fuck up, you mangy goddam hairballs” and flopped back on the pillow.

The yammering continued, and I opened one eye. The room was dark.

That was odd. The moon should be high in the sky in the southwest. I shook my head and peeked around the edge of the curtain. Dark outside, too, and I could see stars. So it hadn’t just clouded up – something pretty unlikely in August in the west anyway.

I went to the front porch and peered up. There was the moon, right where it should have been.

But horribly transformed. Deep orange red, with just the thinnest of white fingernails along the bottom, a time of night and a time of month when no fingernail moon could be in the sky.

That’s when it hit me. There was a total eclipse of the moon. It was supposed to hit totality...I checked my watch...in about four minutes. Nor was there any preternatural occult country knowledge underlying this knowledge – I had read about the eclipse in the city newspaper the day before. There had been little diagrams, basketballs and tennis balls, showing how an eclipse of the moon worked. I used to sneer at such diagrams until I learned that a full 40% of the population in America didn’t know the earth orbited around the sun.

Still, I wondered, if I hadn’t read about the eclipse, and come to the door with no idea what to expect, would I have felt a quiver of atavistic fear? Would the back of my mind, less evolved from a coyote than I would like to flatter myself, have yammered at the strange sight in the southern sky?

The moon was almost three dimensional, the red glow was so variegated and intense. I went back in and nudged my wife. “Lunar eclipse. Come look.” She padded out. Glanced up. “S’ pretty” she mumbled , and went back to sleep.

I listened. The eclipse was total, the last of the familiar white light of the moon was gone. The coyotes had stopped.

What where they thinking? It’s easy to take the high-pitched gibbers and give them the weight of a human scream, but was it really fear that drove them? Was it even anxiety? Lunar total eclipses were common enough, often happening at least once a year and sometimes twice. Were the coyotes “human” enough to pray to the great mother wolf in the sky not to eat all of the daughter of the sun, but to taste deeply of her blood and then vomit her back up?

Or did they just notice something was different, and do the coyote equivalent of what I did when I padded in and disturbed my wife’s sleep? “Lunar eclipse. Come look.”

The top of the moon was beginning to brighten. Soon the shadow would unveil the moon in her fullness, and the calm summer night would resume. I listened to the unaccustomed silence. The crickets were silent. Was it possible they, too, noticed a change?

I went back to bed, intent on getting some good sleep while it remained dark. But I stopped to think a thank you at the coyotes, who had, in their way, told me, “Lunar eclipse. Come look.”