Monday, September 09, 2002

For this I must thank my friend Dale, who, as a former Beagle owner and hunter, came up with this brilliant get-rich-slowly-but-amusingly scheme.

Coyotes; heard of them? Fine critters, no doubt, just right for wandering the arid prarielands, rustlin' groundhogs and chasin' rats, but somewhat out of place in the Wired World of Yaletown.

Yaletown; heard of it? fine neighborhood. Full of rich, beautiful people who have the most amazing manners and who are really, really nice. Really. You want to send cards to their parents or something, they all turned out so well. Nothing bad ever happens there; I think it's a bylaw. All the buildings are either spankin' new fiberoptic wonders or reconditioned SOHO style lofts in old brick lowrises with professionally tended flowerboxes above and Starbucks below.

Yaletown is infested with coyotes.

How can this be? you ask. Easy. Easy peasy. The fact is that Yaletown is built right next to, or even on, the old Expo 86 grounds, most of which still remains barren. Sure, there are glossy highrises, but most of the area is still either a twenty-year-old deconstruction ground of broken paving and scrub grass, or it's Indy track, which is about as close to a desert plain as you are going to get in a temperate rainforest. So really, all you need are a couple of coyote singles getting together over a sixpack of Smirnoff Ice down by False Creek and next thing you know it is a Playboy Mansion for four-footed 'uns. The whole place is ringed with a fence that keeps people out, leaving it free day and night for coyote goin's-on. Gawd only knows whut them critters gits up ta.

So now when the sleek Iranian princesses go out in the mornings to walk Fifi the Maltese they must keep a keen eye out or Fifi may be dejeuner pour un petit loup. Merde!

Alors, my friend Dale put that whole grim tragedy together with the tourist trade and the money in being a hunting guide and came up with this:

The British are slowly losing the legal right run around with a pack of dogs and chase things to their deaths, and are missing the whole hound-hunting experience. Dale suggests that we get a pack of de-accessioned hounds and some old horses that don't mind tourists and one of those cool horns and we conduct a hunt through Yaletown and the old Expo lands. This would have to be done at night, as that is peak coyote-huntin' time.

Picture this: a dead-black night, with a cold, hard rain driving down relentlessly. A bitter wind sweeps the historic streets of Yaletown, setting the lofts to shivering on their firm parkade foundations. A lone creature stalks the night, skulking from Dumpster to Dumpster, gliding like the shadow of a ghost. It pads wetly on its four miserable paws, water pours like slowly waving icicles off its hollow belly. A flare of headlights, and two eyes glow in the darkness, pinpoints of seeking, of hunger.

Suddenly, a sound! Faint trumpeting in the distance, a gaggle of indecipherable noises. The coyote pricks its ears. The cacophonous music comes closer, invisibly, sourceless in the darkness, as if the Great Hunt of the Celts had descended to spread terror through modernity itself. As the mists part and the rain relents, for just a moment the coyote sees.

Hounds, dozens of them! Tall, strong, and hungry, a pack of foxhounds tears down Hamilton Street in a berzerker blood-rage! Behind, as many as twenty fat, rich tourists on horseback, wearing scarlet coats and bowlers and yelling "Tally Ho!" at the top of their lungs, with a guide and hunter tootling on a tiny horn that somebody used to use as a Christmas ornament. The coyote runs, past the Nygard showroom, past the Home Shop, past the yuppie brew pub and Beautymark Cosmetics, past Seattle's Best Coffee and Bar None, past Rodney's Oyster Bar and the neogothic building with the twirling letterblocks that must be art, they're so palpably useless. Can he make it across Pacific Avenue to the wastelands?

No! He has forgotten to push the button for the pedestrian light!

They bring him to ground just outside the Jugo Juice.