Last week I was rum­mag­ing around in a clos­et where we keep toys for our grand­kids’ vis­its when I found a brown ted­dy bear at the bot­tom of a card­board box. I was sur­prised to find him there. He and I go back a long way, but I hadn’t seen him in years. I car­ried him to the bed, sat down, and looked him over. Mem­o­ries flood­ed over me.

Decem­ber 25, 1951. Dad woke me from a deep sleep. “San­ta Claus came last night,” he said. He helped me out of bed and led me into the liv­ing room.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. On a sheet of ply­wood propped up on wood­en crates, a sil­ver loco­mo­tive pulled a coal car, oil tanker, cat­tle car, and caboose round and round an oval track. Next to the elec­tric train, a shiny red Radio Fly­er scoot­er stood on its kick­stand. In front of our tree sat a push-ped­al Castel­li farm trac­tor. Beside it, a palomi­no hob­by horse with a cow­boy suit draped over the saddle.

I was rac­ing around the room when Mom’s voice broke through my buzz of excite­ment. “Look over here, Kenny.” 

Sit­ting in a chair by a win­dow, Mom held in her lap a black ter­ri­er pup­py with a big red bow around his neck. He wagged his tail and whined. I ran toward him, tripped over a foot­stool, and fell at Mom’s feet. The pup­py sprang from her lap and jumped all over me, lick­ing my face. He was my first dog. I named him Nicky.

There were many oth­er gifts under our tree that morn­ing, includ­ing a brown ted­dy bear.

My par­ents must have sac­ri­ficed great­ly to make that Christ­mas so spe­cial for me. Dad and Mom weren’t dirt-poor back then, but they were far from rich. Our house was a lit­tle box sit­ting on a small lot cut out of a pine for­est. It didn’t have indoor plumb­ing. We hand-pumped our water from a well and braved the cold in win­ter to do our busi­ness in an out­house behind our chick­en coop. Dad made a liv­ing sell­ing a Hud­son or two a month out of our back­yard. Those sales put food on the table and paid the bills, but there couldn’t have been much left over to fund a fan­cy Christ­mas. And yet I got every­thing a rich kid could want that morning.

I was a lit­tle boy back then, too excit­ed to care how my par­ents felt about giv­ing me those gifts, but I know now, from my own feel­ings about my son’s first Christ­mas, how much that morn­ing meant to them. I was their first child, and at that point still their only child, and that was the first Christ­mas I was old enough to under­stand the mag­ic of San­ta Claus. Their reward for their sac­ri­fice was my unbri­dled joy, and to them it was priceless.

That was the hap­pi­est Christ­mas of my child­hood. I was four years old.

When Jack­ie Paper was a lit­tle boy, he played with Puff the mag­ic drag­on in the imag­i­nary won­der­land of Honah Lee. A drag­on lives for­ev­er. Not so with lit­tle boys. Jack­ie grew up and came to Honah Lee to play with Puff no more.

My elec­tric train broke down. We packed it up in a box and shoved it to the back of the clos­et. A bicy­cle replaced the shiny red scoot­er and the trac­tor. I out­grew the hob­by horse and cow­boy suit. And unlike Puff, Nicky didn’t live for­ev­er, except in my heart.

Only the brown ted­dy bear defied the leg­end of Honah Lee. When I out­grew him, I passed him on to my broth­ers. Mom kept him when they left home and years lat­er gave him to my son. When my son set him aside, my daugh­ters picked him up, and when they left home, we stowed him in a clos­et. Cindy and I moved ten times after that, three of them cross-coun­try from coast to coast. Although we took no spe­cial care to hang on to the lit­tle old bear, he some­how sur­vived all of that.

As I sat on the bed star­ing at him, the many hap­py Christ­mases of my youth came back to me, includ­ing my last Christ­mas at home with Mom, Dad, and my broth­ers. I was twen­ty, home on hol­i­day break from UVA. Dad had been the preach­er at Mount Mori­ah Methodist Church in White Hall, Vir­ginia, for six years. Every year the church gave bas­kets of food and box­es of toys to poor fam­i­lies on Christ­mas Eve. I’d nev­er joined the church mem­bers on the trips to deliv­er gifts. I always had a date or a par­ty to attend, some­thing fun to do, but that year Dad insist­ed I go along. 

Sulk­ing, I rode shot­gun in his Ram­bler as we led a car­a­van of church mem­bers’ cars and pick­up trucks over a wind­ing dirt road. We stopped in front of a falling-down, one-room shack sit­ting on the edge of the woods. We got out, grouped up by the side of the road, and sang Silent Night.

The shack’s door opened. John­ny Sipe stood in the door­way. In his ear­ly twen­ties, short and heavy­set, with dark sunken eyes, he did his best to main­tain a tight, twitchy smile as we sang the car­ol. His bone-thin pale girl­ish wife stood behind him, peek­ing timid­ly over his shoul­der. A few vers­es into Silent Night, she retreat­ed inside the shack and sat on the edge of a bed. In the flick­er­ing can­dle­light, I could bare­ly see two lit­tle faces star­ing at us, the bed cov­ers pulled up to their chins. 

No elec­tric­i­ty, I thought. No heat.

When we fin­ished singing, John­ny stepped down off the stoop into the yard. The church mem­bers formed a cir­cle around him and placed the gift bas­kets and box­es of toys at his feet. “Mer­ry Christ­mas,” Dad said. 

John­ny fought back tears. “Y’all are good to help us. We been havin a rough go of it –” His voice broke. He swal­lowed hard. “I’m tryin’ awful hard, preach­er,” he said, “but noth­in’ works.” He low­ered his head and wept soft­ly, his shoul­ders shaking.

Frank Abel stood beside him. Frank was a dairy farmer in his fifties, tough and strong, but one of the kind­est, nicest men I’ve ever known. He put his arm around John­ny. John­ny grabbed Frank, buried his face in Frank’s neck, and sobbed. Frank hugged him for a long time.

I knew then why Dad made me come along that Christ­mas Eve.

Most every­thing Cindy and I tried worked out for us. Some of that was because of effort and tal­ent; some of it was because some­one helped us climb out of a hole; and some of it was because each time we pushed all the chips into the mid­dle of the table and bet against the odds, we won.

My old ted­dy bear’s not in great shape. The fur has worn off around his nose. The cloth cov­er­ing his hands and feet wore away and the stitch­ing hold­ing his back togeth­er came apart. Mom sewed him up, but most of his stuff­ing had already leaked out and his arms and legs went limp. He can’t stand or sit up straight, but he’s still with me, the last remain­ing rel­ic of a per­fect Christ­mas when the lit­tle boy inside me still played in an imag­i­nary wonderland.

Yes­ter­day, as I wrote this, I dust­ed off the lit­tle bear and put him in an hon­ored place on my book­shelf in my office beside two of my favorite things, a toy repli­ca of a Hud­son and a fin­ger­paint­ing that says, “I LOVE PAPAW,” both Christ­mas gifts, one from my daugh­ter, the oth­er from my granddaughter.

There’s noth­ing I can write about the con­trast between Johnny’s Christ­mases and mine that hasn’t been said many times, and I’m not a preach­er, like my dad. I’ll mere­ly state the obvi­ous, what we all know, but too often for­get. Many of us are blessed, and many are not. We, the for­tu­nate, should extend a help­ing hand when­ev­er we can, not just dur­ing the hol­i­days, but all the time.

Post Script: I changed Johnny’s name for this piece. The real John­ny worked as a farm­hand for sev­er­al of the men who deliv­ered gifts to him that Christ­mas Eve, but I don’t think things improved much for him and his fam­i­ly. They still lived in that shack when I moved away from White Hall. I don’t know what became of them after that. 

Every morn­ing at dawn I walk down the dri­ve­way with my dog, Zoey, to get the news­pa­per. When we stepped out­side one day a cou­ple of years ago, a coy­ote stood in the front yard. Lean with a dirty gray coat, spindly legs, long snout, and pointy tri­an­gu­lar ears, it low­ered its head, and stared at us with pierc­ing close-set eyes.

I keep Zoey’s leash in a peach bas­ket just out­side the door. She gave out a gut­tur­al cry and sprang for­ward before I had a chance to reach for it.

The coy­ote ran down my dri­ve­way and took off up the street. The hair on Zoey’s back spik­ing into a mohawk, every mus­cle in her body bulging, her teeth bared, she gave chase.

Zoey is an Amer­i­can Bull­dog, two feet tall at the shoul­ders, weigh­ing 70 pounds. The aver­age coy­ote is her height but less than half her weight. When Zoey was young, she would have been more than a match for any coy­ote, but she was eleven years old that day with arthri­tis in her front shoul­ders and an arti­fi­cial back knee, so I wasn’t sure she could sur­vive a fight with this one.

Zoey paid me no heed when I yelled at her to stop. I ran after her. Sev­en­ty-three years old with dou­ble knee replace­ments, I lost ground on her quick­ly. By the time I got to the bot­tom of the dri­ve­way, she was fifty yards up the street with the coy­ote anoth­er twen­ty yards ahead of her. I’d almost lost sight of them when Zoey’s adren­a­line surge wore off, and she slowed to a stiff-legged trot. The coy­ote could have pulled away from her eas­i­ly, but instead it looked back and stopped. This revived Zoey’s flag­ging ener­gy, and she charged ahead. The coy­ote wait­ed until Zoey was almost on it, then hopped off the street, and loped up a steep hill.

Zoey fol­lowed in hot pur­suit. About half-way up, her arthri­tis final­ly got the best of her. She stum­bled and fell, then scram­bled to her feet, bark­ing hys­ter­i­cal­ly, but she was too weak to climb higher.

I clumped along the street, stag­gered up the hill, and grabbed her col­lar. Breath­ing hard, I looked up at the sum­mit. A sec­ond coy­ote stood beside the one Zoey had chased. Nei­ther seemed tired or the least bit fear­ful. While I caught my breath, they watched us close­ly. When I pulled Zoey back down to the street, they trot­ted over the hill out of sight.

Back inside the house, Zoey col­lapsed on the rug in my home-office, and I plopped down in my desk chair. As Zoey lay at my feet, pant­i­ng furi­ous­ly, spent, and exhaust­ed, a grudg­ing respect for the flee­ing coy­ote came over me. It had set a trap for a dog too big to take down alone. It stopped on the street to lure Zoey to the top of the hill where its part­ner was wait­ing. We were lucky Zoey’s arthri­tis broke her down. If she’d been able to scale that hill, she’d have been an easy kill in a two-on-one fight.

Many of my neigh­bors’ pets have not been so fortunate.

My neigh­bor­hood is an eques­tri­an com­mu­ni­ty with large lots and miles of trails wind­ing in between and around the prop­er­ties, all nes­tled up against a fifty-six-hun­dred-acre nature pre­serve. Coy­otes migrate from the pre­serve, set up dens in the brush, and hunt the trails, open fields, and backyards.

Walk­ing my dogs and horse­back rid­ing dai­ly, I’ve seen count­less coy­otes since I moved here, but recent­ly there’s been a change in their behav­ior. The fre­quen­cy of sight­ings has increased. I see coy­otes at all times of the day, any­where and every­where, in streets, neigh­bors’ yards, and home con­struc­tion sites. They shied away from me before. Now, they rarely retreat, even when Zoey and P.D., an 80-pound Pit Bull, are with me. They’re no longer afraid of people.

This absence of fear, referred to as habit­u­a­tion, is a dan­ger­ous phe­nom­e­non. Nat­u­ral­ists Rex Bak­er and Robert Timm, who stud­ied coy­otes in sub­ur­ban and urban envi­ron­ments, observed sev­en stages of esca­lat­ing aggres­sive behav­ior among habit­u­at­ed coy­otes. Coy­otes in my neigh­bor­hood have reached stage 5 – attack­ing pets on a leash or stand­ing near an own­er. If Bak­er and Timm’s study is an accu­rate pre­dic­tor of coy­ote aggres­sion, we need to reverse the progress of habit­u­a­tion before it reach­es Stages 6 and 7, threat­en­ing actions toward chil­dren and adults.

The prob­lem of habit­u­a­tion is not unique to my neigh­bor­hood. No one knows how many coy­otes there are nation­wide, but esti­mates reach into the mil­lions. In Cal­i­for­nia alone, nat­u­ral­ists think there could be as many as 750,000, and the pop­u­la­tion is grow­ing. Coy­otes are fierce­ly ter­ri­to­r­i­al. As their num­bers increase, they spread out to estab­lish new hunt­ing grounds. As a result, they are ubiq­ui­tous. They live in vir­tu­al­ly every rur­al, sub­ur­ban, and urban area from the Arc­tic Cir­cle to Pana­ma, from New York City to down­town Chica­go, San Fran­cis­co, and Los Angeles.

Habit­u­a­tion has reached Stage 5 in count­less neigh­bor­hoods and reports of attacks on pets are com­mon­place, but thank­ful­ly, attacks on peo­ple are rare. Bak­er and Timm’s study found 367 report­ed coy­ote attacks on humans over the four decades from 1977 through 2015. About half occurred in Cal­i­for­nia. Chil­dren com­prised 40% of the vic­tims, adults 60%. Many of the attacks on small chil­dren appeared to be preda­to­ry and occurred dur­ing the mat­ing and pup-rais­ing sea­son from March through August when coy­ote mates, who are monog­a­mous for life, are some­times des­per­ate for prey to feed their young. Attacks on adults often involved peo­ple try­ing to defend their pets from a coy­ote mauling.

In anoth­er study of coy­ote attacks by Lynsey White and Stan­ley Gehrt, about half result­ed in minor bite wounds. Preda­to­ry attacks and rabid coy­otes account­ed for most of the seri­ous injuries.

There have only been two report­ed fatal coy­ote attacks in North Amer­i­ca. A lone coy­ote killed a three-year-old girl in front of her house in Glen­dale, Cal­i­for­nia, in 1985, and a pack of coy­otes attacked a young woman on a hik­ing trail in Cana­da in 2002.

Coy­ote stud­ies show that there are no easy ways to reform aggres­sive behav­ior once coy­otes become habit­u­at­ed. Exter­mi­na­tion doesn’t work. About 400,000 coy­otes are killed annu­al­ly, 80,000 by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment alone, but coy­ote pop­u­la­tions con­tin­ue to explode, large­ly because coy­ote biol­o­gy is primed to com­bat exter­mi­na­tion. When the rate of killing increas­es, females pro­duce larg­er lit­ters, and new­born coy­otes mature faster and quick­ly fill the habi­tat vac­u­um cre­at­ed by the killings.

Relo­cat­ing them is also inef­fec­tive. They usu­al­ly return to their orig­i­nal ter­ri­to­ry, and when they don’t, oth­er coy­otes move in and take over.

The most effec­tive alter­na­tive to pro­tect pets and peo­ple seems to be “haz­ing,” reviv­ing a coyote’s nat­ur­al fear of humans. The sim­plest way to haze is to wave your arms and yell at a coy­ote, but that alone is often inef­fec­tive where habit­u­a­tion has tak­en hold in the coy­ote pop­u­la­tion. Coy­ote experts rec­om­mend blast­ing airhorns, shak­ing plas­tic con­tain­ers filled with rocks, bang­ing pots and pans togeth­er, throw­ing rocks, turn­ing water hoses on them, and pep­per spray.

Bak­er and Timm believe that haz­ing may not work once a coy­ote has reached Stage 5, attack­ing pets in the pres­ence of their own­ers. They rec­om­mend more dras­tic mea­sures along with haz­ing to deter aggres­sion at that stage, such as removal of mem­bers of the local coy­ote pop­u­la­tion through exter­mi­na­tion or relo­ca­tion, to send a mes­sage to the remain­ing pack.

Oth­er stud­ies con­clude that haz­ing can cure a severe coy­ote habit­u­a­tion prob­lem if all the peo­ple in a neigh­bor­hood con­sis­tent­ly haze every coy­ote they con­front. They rec­om­mend com­mu­ni­ty out­reach and edu­ca­tion to achieve an effec­tive haz­ing program.

I’m against killing coy­otes and in favor of haz­ing. Coy­otes are not evil. They are wild preda­tors, try­ing to make a liv­ing, and impor­tant mem­bers of the eco sys­tem, help­ing to con­trol the rodent, small mam­mal, and rep­tile pop­u­la­tions. In my neighborhood’s case, they were here first. We moved into their nat­ur­al habi­tat. I feel strong­ly we should try to coex­ist with them.

I real­ize, though, that I might not hold that view if the flee­ing coyote’s trap had worked a cou­ple of years ago. If the coy­ote and its part­ner had killed Zoey. If I’d heard her death wails. If she’d died in my arms. Some of my neigh­bors have lost their pets that way. They dis­agree with me, and I can’t blame them.

Mean­while, I moved that peach bas­ket inside my door. I snap on the leash before we go out­side. And I haze every coy­ote we meet on the trails.

Post Script: All the pho­tographs of coy­otes dis­played here I took in my neigh­bor­hood over the last cou­ple of years before I start­ed haz­ing them. As you can see, they were almost indif­fer­ent to my presence.