You can take...

...the boy out of the city, but can't take the city out of the boy.  Isn't that how it goes?  Something like that, I think.

The other day, out running on a beautiful AM, I ran across a coyote.  Well, within about 10-15 yards of one.  I saw him (or her?) before he saw me.  When he did, he was startled, stopped, jogged backward for a ways, and moved farther away into a yard.  After I passed he moved back along his way, heading into a subdivision.

Scrawny, spindly, with a pointy nose and scruffy tail.  The long thin legs almost looked as if they shouldn't be able to hold him up.

That's only the second coyote, live one, I've seen while running.  The other few I've been in the car.  And there have been the roadkill carcasses.

Yep, I was excited and have brought it up more than once since.

Earlier during that run, I was in a zone when awakened by the screech of car brakes.  They weren't close to me, at least not very close.  I hadn't been paying attention, but immediately looked up and saw a small yellow Fiat that had narrowly missed a rather large deer crossing the road.  It was a close call and with the small car and large deer, I don't think the crash would have been a pretty one.  It was somewhat comforting to see that the driver of the Fiat was a young girl; she was driving carefully enough to be able to stop to avoid the collision.  She did look a bit shaken, though, as I ran by and waved to her and her passengers, who looked perhaps like her parents.

This AM a doe stood and waited for me, at least, until I ran within 15 yards or so of her.  And she was looking at me, too!  This doe was a pretty brown color, not like a lot of the matted and splotchy coats many of the deer around here seem to have.  She ran into the brush as I passed and then, when I did, she followed me a bit down the trail.

One thing not so nice about Mother Nature has been the deer flies out on the trails.  Even though I'm out there by 6 AM or so, so are the deer flies.  A silver lining, though, is that they have not been out in force like they usually are.

We've had some odd weather the past week or two.  Several strong winds have blown down sizable trees.  On our block alone, a good-sized maple went down last Monday night along with three or four tall pines a few houses away.  Out in the state park, it looked like a wind sheer blasted through, cutting a 30-40' swath among the trees.  A lot of the trees, including some big ones, were knocked down, blocking the running paths and even the single road leading back to the dam.  The rangers spent a lot of time with their chain saws getting the road open for the kids' day camping classes.

Today, Bopper and I had to go get measured for our tuxedos for Matt's wedding.  Going today was a mistake.  Traffic lights were down, either from today's earlier storm or an accident.  Even the mall, where we were measured, lost power for a while until the emergency generators kicked on after a few minutes. Traffic on one of the adjacent roads leading to the mall was backed up a good 5-6 miles.  I negotiated our way home by taking a number of back roads.