Chance Meeting

Friday morning and I'm zipping down a back country road doing about seventy. I see it up ahead and to my right, glimpses of gold in the tall grasses. It's heading towards the road. I think it's a deer.

I check around me. Cars behind me are pretty far back. The semi in the oncoming lane is still about a mile off. I take my foot off the gas, tap the brake to clue in the guy behind me and wait to see what happens.

Whatever it is, it's making a beeline for the road. Then the grass parts and I finally see it's Coyote. He lopes up on to the road ahead of me, and as he's passing through my lane, he turns his head to look straight at me.

I'm calculating -- my speed, his speed, the speed of the oncoming semi. "Go, go, GO!" I yell.

He gives me that doggy smile before his head swivels back around to join his body and he picks up speed, launching off the far side of the road in a grand leap down into the scrub.

Showoff.