Badger and Coyote

A True-ish Story of Symbiosis

By Stephanie Diane Pierce

Art by Kell-y Turnbull

 

 

 

An Excerpt: 

   . . .  Meanwhile, in another part of the prairie, almost at the edge of the woods, a playful coyote was thinking he was ridiculously, deliriously, hungry.

 

He swooped, fast as can be, after a rodent of one sort or another, moving almost too fast to see his handsome yellow-gold coat.  Legs stiff as pikes, he pounced down on the exhausted bit of dinner, like playing a game of jump with his many brothers and sisters, but it was gone. To where had his food disappeared? The ground swallowed it. The rodent had evidently slipped away into a back tunnel and gone home, quite without staying over for supper, without even a word to the young coyote.

 

Humph.

 

Coyote danced over the fields, stirring up this and that, watching the fireflies fly, and wondering where he would find his next meal. A mole, likewise, burrowed off, a bunch of small rabbits. Frustrated, Coyote munched grapes off a wild bush before heading back to bed, worn out. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day for hunting.

 

Badger met with less success than he had hoped. Conscientiously tracking the hare to its burrow, he had dug and worked, cautiously, quietly, quickly, only to find, forehead deep in rich black soil, that the hare had flown the coop… metaphorically speaking. The flighty thing had bounded off over land, leaving the badger’s breakfast dishes empty and his mood more curmudgeonly than ever. Badger hunkered down to a bit of a sulk, before he regained his natural patience, and muttered the whole long walk home.

 

The next day met with only minor success, and quite a bit of defeat and hungry bellies, for our two heroes. The dashing slim charmer lost the game to two pairs of quail, as he was young and foolish enough to stalk things which can take to the air, and a number of burrowers who mocked him from beneath. The stolid and hard-working badger, with the irascible temper he rarely gave in to, lost any number of fleet-footed creatures to the above grasslands, who swept themselves away in the evening dew while he performed his best digging and greatest efforts at a patient siege.

 

The badger and the coyote were both terribly frustrated, but neither was sure, yet, what to do. So both got a little leaner, the badger flatter, like a dinner plate, the coyote still more like a quick little shadow or wisp of a dog.

 

The next evening, the stolid badger had a thought. I wonder how the other animals get on? He went to watch the others, but some ate only leaves, and some ate mostly fish, and some badgered the badger, trying to chew on his bits.

 

Finally, he spotted the coyote, chasing a hare much like the one he’d been following. The hare, startled out of its den, bounded like the wind, but the coyote, really quite hungry now, was faster, and pounced with his stiff forward legs, and dashed and zagged like an entire regiment of fleet-footed cavalry.  Badger shook his head in some admiration, and not a little envy (under the cover of darkness and leaf shadow) and then, finally, in amusement, as the hare dove into another burrow and the coyote, exhausted and starved, sat back on its young, slim haunches to rethink its place in the Universe, and question its dubious approach to basic survival. The quick-tempered gold-brown bit of sunlight and shadow sighed from the depth of his long-limbed paws and bounded back to its empty, hungry den, and the badger sat for a while, thinking before he made his steady rustle back home as well.

 

The next night, the sly coyote thought to sneak about the leavings of the larger animals, to see what he could find. He shared a bit of leftover fish, but almost got a soaking in the process, he laughed across the bank at the big bear and danced away to the sound of annoyed maternal roars, he jousted with some others, and was painfully trounced by a pack of wolves, with, clearly, no sense of civic or communal charity, before he chanced upon the stolid badger, making its slow but hurried way into the grassland. Coyote laughed until his tongue lolled out and his slim legs went up in the air over the night flowers as he rolled a bit in the grasses. How could such a low, heavy, plodder ever — but then, if he did not eat, how did he survive? Perhaps the wise badger had learnt the art of living off the moonlight? Perhaps the quick and daring coyote ought to steal the alchemy of it! Coyote tracked the badger all about his stolid peregrinations, staying downwind from his constant sniffing and ignoring the mumbles of his own stomach as he laughed silently at the badger's grumbles and mumbles, and very quiet oaths.

 

Finally, coyote perked up his ears, and stood, quite shocked and still, in his gold-dun uniform, all angles and surprise, as Badger began to chase a being that a coyote might eat, straight through the ground!    ...  ...  ...