The song dogs: A poetic essay by Uncle Joe

The scrapblog editor likes this essay by Uncle Joe so much that she's tried to shop it to a couple of paying publications. Their editors liked it too but said it didn't fit their "mission." Well, excuse us very much! It fits our mission!

Here is the essay, which we edited slightly and printed with permission from Uncle Joe. Actually we haven't gotten his permission yet, but seeing as how he's editor emeritus of the scrapblog and CEO of this glamorous new scrapblog reading library, we're thinking he probably won't sue us.

Here's the absolutely lovely essay, the first of many we plan to reprint from Uncle Joe's 2004 book "Lake Pepin Pot-pour-ri."

The Song Dogs

By ELMER (JOE) SPRICK

If you've heard coyotes sing, you might not agree with the outdoorsmen and wilderness buffs who interpret their eerie sounds as songs. Their voices can range from a torturous scream to a mournful howl.

We first heard them from the ridges overlooking our campsite while backpacking in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area of Idaho and Montana. A year or so later, a pack chased a rabbit through our campground in the Flambeau River State Forest in northern Wisconsin during the wee hours of the morning. Fortunately, most of the campers slept through it, or there may have been some kids as scared as the rabbit being chased.

Because coyotes are nocturnal, we seldom see them in broad daylight. A well-hidden, quiet human watcher might get a fleeting glance at one at dawn or dusk. Coyotes have keen eyesight and an excellent sense of smell.

When we built our retirement home at Ten Oaks, north of Lake City, Minn., [Joe and Mavis now live in Lake City proper] there were no coyotes in the area. They would soon arrive.

The gray and red fox that we once saw and heard quite frequently are now gone. Biologists tell us that coyotes and fox compete for much of the same food, and sometimes the fox is the food.

Even though we sleep with the patio door of our bedroom partly open for much of the year, the rumble and whistle of the trains seldom wake us. It is the yipping and howling of the coyotes triggered by the train whistle that sometimes gives us a wake-up call.

But as loud as their song may be, we much prefer it to the barking of our neighbor's dog, for we know that the coyotes will stop singing as soon as the train passes, while Mollie next door keeps right on barking, day or night.

When one sits in a tree stand the last hour of daylight during bow season, a lot of man-made sounds might lead one to think that there is no wildlife within miles. Car and trucks zoom past on nearby Hwy. 61. The railroad tracks are on one side of my tree stand. And I can clearly hear people coming and going in the residential area just a few hundred feet on the other side. It is a far cry from wilderness, where the hand of man is not apparent.

But when darkness falls, about the time one climbs down from the tree stand and starts up the hill to the house, a lone coyote howls less than 50 yards away, and chills go up my spine. Another coyote answers about 50 yards away in the opposite direction, and my hair stands on end.

For a brief moment, the song dogs give the illusion of wilderness even though the lights shine from our living room window only a hundred yards away.

There are those of us who still need just a wee bit of wilderness tonic for the soul, even though it may come in small doses from the consummate survivors -- the song dogs.