The Daily News

Every morning – after I’ve read my email and played a few games of computer solitaire – I take the dogs for a walk. Actually, “walk” is kind of a misnomer; it’s more like a “smell”.

This is a bonding exercise for our little pack: sharing the smells on the morning walk and I am merely there to witness their daily ritual. In their own language they chuckle and gasp at the various smells along the route. They stop at the juniper bush in front and see who’s been by. Each one takes a sniff, and then we move on: “nothing new here… just bunny-poo”. A little further down the road, “Sparky’s already been here.” And “The River of Fur (three New Foundlands) has been by…” Then “Over here! Somebody had chicken for dinner last night!” “Uh-oh, Scruffy’s people forgot to pick up his shit again… Oh, that’s old shit.”

Everybody checks it out. Each smell. Gabi studies it in depth, with special interest in rabbit shit and bird droppings. Grreta will smell up one side of a blade of grass and down the other side to identify whoever left their “mark” – and she refuses to move on until she is finished. Bindi is dedicated to the hunt – and when he finds “evidence”, more often just eats it… but not until it’s been thoroughly examined by Gabi and Grreta.

And then! Together they huddle over the scene of a great disaster! Wait, wait! A coyote has been this way! Here is genuine coyote-shit! Red and mottled with bits of bone all in a great, tantalizing pile, right in the middle of the road!!. Grreta takes charge: she smells, she looks around, she reports to the others, they all hover and smell and discuss the pile of shit. Then Gabi goes about 10 feet away, up in the dirt! She’s found the ground all stirred up in a circle and… wait! Rabbit blood! Something happened here! The others join her. This smell is slightly older than the coyote-shit, but … yes, they are related! Same coyote! It’s a killing field – definitely! That Coyote has caught, slain and eaten a rabbit. It appears by the thorough cleanup of the site that the Coyote has a great deal of experience killing and eating rabbits. It is “His Nature”! And what about the rabbit? Are there more? Gabi looks under the pinon tree and in the usual rabbit dens… nothing new there. Grreta looks up in the far distance for signs of the Coyote: could He be walking across the arroyo now? She has spotted them before, and someday she dreams of catching one in the act.

And Bindi? He scruffs the dirt where the rabbit was slain, and then with a flying leap: he rolls in it.

How like in real life.