My coyote education continues here at the cottage, perched at the edge of a wide swath of conservancy land. It's Friday night right at sunset and coyotes from three separate clans head down the hill. They're seemingly ignoring each other but the precise and unvarying distance they maintain says otherwise. And then, just moments after they're gone, a trio of coyote pups pops out from behind a clump of flowers and they literally tumble down the hill.

Too dark to shoot without a tripod so the photos are even fuzzier than the pups. The little guys are skinny and pointy, long legs, big ears, big snouts. They're still working on that whole coordination thing.

Yesterday, the coyote who I think is their mother came home at dawn from hunting and she was wounded. Moving well but her right flank was torn and scraped. Quiet last night, quiet this morning.

Google says coyotes often attack each other, clan-on-clan warfare, particularly when food and water get scarce. It also talks about how, as predators, they are pitiless, though anyone living among them needs no reminder. A hard life to live, a hard life to watch.