I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t sleep well.

I mean I sleep, but I go through periods where I can’t get to sleep earlier than 3 am…or in the case of this post, 4 am.

4 am, the witching hour…okay, not really, but that’s when everything seems to happen around here. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about check out my Wake Up Call post for some background)

Let me set the scene:

My cat is sleeping at the foot of my bed. I’m not sleeping very well. I’m in that asleep, but conscious of the room state. I’d been stuck in this state since about 3:30 (I hadn’t been able to shut my brain down enough to try to sleep all night).

Anybut, 4 am, I hear a scream from outside. Now it reminds me of a drunk man whoo-hooing, but it’s a bit too high pitched and it’s a constant repeating “scream”. After a good two minutes, my cat lifts her head up and I know it’s not a person.

I grab my glasses and crawl out of bed. I look out my bedroom window, but can’t see anything. All the while the cries (cause surely they’re sounding more like cries now) continue. I walk into another room facing the golf course across the street from my house (not a fancy golf course I assure you) and I see a small shape standing just out of the light of the streetlamp.

A mother flipping coyote, still howling, has “woken” me up from my awful sleep. It keeps crying and of course I’m thinking no one will believe me. So I run to my room and grab my phone (like the good little millenial I am). I turn on the camera and….the fart knuckle shuts up!

I kid you not, the second I hit record that son (or daughter) of a bitch shuts the hell up!

Sorry for the crap video, but it was 4 am.

It wanders a little, lies down for a spell, cleans its teeth on the fence and then disappears out fo the circle of light further onto the golf course. Probably off to find any dog left out over night.

I hope not, but coyotes are (in my best David Attenborough impression) opportunity hunters.

My cat has left the bed to find warmer pastures and now I’m stuck awake at 4L30 in the morning with my right foot aching and my left leg spasming (explanation of that fun part of my life in a post to come)…fuck me.

Here’s a slightly okay image of the bastard: