Sunset in Calgary. Our weather warmed up briefly and set fire to sky. Or, at least that is how it appeared.

Coyotes

Thursday morning Ginger woke me at 1:00 am and asked to go outside. She usually stands by my side of the bed and stares at me and gently woofs. She does this until Iwake up and she could do this for several minutes, I don't know for sure. My husband Bryan has a rule which he arbitrarily applies to anyone other than himself that dictates that Ginger is not to pee on the lawn. The temperature outside was in the low -20's. I didn't care where she pee'd outside I was not going to take her for a walk.
We went downstairs,opened the door and she stepped into the frigid air and wrinkled her nose. She picked her way carefully over the snow drifts and eventually found a level place to squat. She paced back and forth along the golf course side of our chain link fence and sniffed the air over and over. Eventually she returned to the warm house and stood looking back outside through the glass door and I went back upstairs to bed.
I had just put my head down when the coyotes started up, they yipped and howled and barked right under our bedroom window. They were standing in the spruce trees on the golf course side of the fence. The sound was eerie and spine chillingly frightening. Such a primal sound. A lonely sound. They were calling Ginger to come back out to play. Thank God she had come in when I called, she could easily have decided to investigate the smells in the air. The shape shifters were waiting for her.