Coyote

Thursday morning, I was driving to the office and I was in Peabody on Lynnfield Street near the CVS (for those of you familiar with the area). I noticed a dog on the side of the road, straying into traffic and looking around from side to side.

Only. He wasn't a dog. He was a coyote. Smack dab in the middle of one of the busiest roads in the city of Peabody. Walking up the middle of Lynnfield Street. Right there. He was very young and very thin, lanky, very long in the legs. Long bushy tail, huge pointy ears. I slowed down and he ran behind me. I grabbed my camera, but he ran into the schoolyard and into the meager woods there and took cover.  

No one else was there on the road. The car in front of me didn't see him, and no one was coming the opposite direction or up behind me at breakneck speed.

So I wondered for a while, why no one was there. It was morning in Peabody for crying out loud... normally insanely crowded, I would have been sitting there backed up to Summit Street on any other given day.

I'm not one prone to believe in symbols and messages... but I did a little looking up of what the Coyote symbolizes in a few cultures.

I used to think the Bear was my "power animal..." perhaps I've had it wrong. Ole Coyote brought a smile to my clowning, sarcastic face, and I drove away without my photographic evidence with the memory of something strange and peculiar in the middle of the North Shore.