Map Quest, Coyote Calls, & a Trickster Talisman

The stack of maps that I ordered from AAA arrived yesterday and I immediately got to work on marking them up with penciled-in circles and squiggles. What a lifesaver! With my membership I was able to order up to 10 maps and guidebooks (a quota that I promptly filled) and have them shipped to me for free within the week. Boo-yah! That frees my finances up to purchase a Primos Lil' Dog Coyote call . . . I'll explain the purpose behind that in a sec. At this point in my trip planning, I've gotten only as far as southeastern Oregon by way of Crater Lake and some seriously snaky-looking roads. To find out where I would find coyotes in Oregon, I had to do a little subterfuge-style research.

Apparently, coyotes are not a welcome addition to the Oregonian wilderness. Google searches on "Oregon coyotes" and "coyote sightings in Oregon" brought me only a wealth of coyote hate pages. One forum on coyote hunting in particular proved especially useful in pinpointing the whereabouts of my buddies, with hunters going by the names of "OregonElkSlayer" and "The Dude" providing some valuable insight on their favorite back country pastime. Even though I grew up around rifles and shotguns, and even shot off a few rounds myself from time to time, it never occurred to me that killing an animal for sport could be fun. Couldn't a person take his primitive hunter's aggression out on video games like Elk Hunt, Duck Hunt, and Mario Kart II? Considering that over 80,000 coyotes are hunted a year under the guise of "predator control" and "varmint extermination," I get the feeling that I'll find myself up against some considerable static in my attempt to educate the public on coyote coexistence. That's okay, as long as I have my pepper spray at the ready.

The hunting forum provided one other bit of useful information. For $20, I could be the proud owner of the top-rated coyote predator call on the market, and thus effortlessly lure my subjects to me. The Primos Lil' Dog Coyote Call is a tiny whistle that can be used to mimic not only the howl of a coyote, but also the squeaks and screams of dying rodents and birds, which is just like can opener music to the ears of these wild dogs. A call like this could be useful should I want to see a coyote up close (yes, yes!), but it also poses the problem of putting me in the same league as hunters who use it for less benign reasons. As frou-frou as it sounds, I don't think deception scores me major points in my quest is for karma, so I'll probably pass, but the idea is tempting.

On a different, yet related note, I found the perfect talisman for my journey! It's a bronze pin of a coyote driving a Cadillac that I bought for $3 from someone on eBay. Wow, who'd of thought? Every time I look at it I get the chorus for Steppenwolf's hit song "Born to be Wild" stuck on eternal loop through my head, so I've learned to keep it out of eyesight most of the time. It was an amazing find but I never knew what to do with it. I guess I simply don't have the guts to stick it on my jacket and wear it proudly out in public - even in San Francisco, where I get away with donning hot pink tights and an electric blue polka-dotted leather jacket with asymmetrical zipper on a regular basis. The coyote cruiser pin has sat for months on top of my jewelry box, awaiting a fate of dust collection and the occasional show-off to bemused family and friends; however, last night it warranted a renewed interest on my part. Even though I never followed the trend in the early 90's of hanging a silver angel from my rearview mirror, I certainly don't mind sticking a bronze road-tripping coyote pin to the visor of my vehicle now. I'm even adding the inscription of "never drive faster than your coyote can accelerate" to keep with the tongue-in-cheek theme of a canine angel on my shoulder. Am I committing a major sacrilege? I don't really know. But I’m banking on a decade of Catholic school to atone for my playfulness. The coyote is called "God's dog," after all. So there. *Pfffftt!*