Gadarene Coyotes Part 1

* To the best of my recollection this story is true and occurred in 1973. LLR

Gadarene Coyotes      

When I came to full consciousness I was already sitting straight up in my little, single bed with my head about 1 foot away from the sloped roof of my small attic bedroom. Everything was completely silent so I wasn’t sure what had woken me up. 

Suddenly I heard it. A blood curdling howl followed by a bunch of barking. I was very familiar with who was making the barking but the howling was something I couldn’t identify. 

The barking ruckus was being made by our two young farm dogs. My naughty terrier, Trapper and my brother’s sweet German Shepherd, Husky who was still very much a puppy. But just as my slightly foggy brain was trying to identify the howl another one split the dark night. Then another. Then another. I had been sitting in my bed long enough. I paused for just a few seconds to get into my slippers and shrug into my blue, furry duster. I rushed down the stairs of our small farmhouse and jumped from the landing missing the two bottom steps (which were nonexistent) and landed, BOOM, onto our living room floor.

When I landed on the floor my mother turned to look at me. Every light in the house was on, including the front porch light.
She responded with, “I figured all the noise would wake you up, my little Cookie Monster.” Which is exactly what I resembled in my blue duster. 

“I could tell the dogs were barking but I can’t tell what is making all the howling. It certainly doesn’t sound like wolves. Too high pitched and pathetic for that.”

Mom shook her head and looked at me. “How did you get so smart about nature, when you’re just a seven year old city girl? Take a look outside the front door but don’t open it!”

I almost tiptoed to the door and noticed that the inner one was open but the screen door was still shut with it’s metal latch firmly clipped shut. As I came to the door Trapper and Husky looked up at me from their places on the porch with anxious looks on each of their faces. I sensed they were waiting for me to issue a command. Then another howl cut through the night, gave me goosebumps and my eyes immediately looked up to seek the source. And that’s when I saw them.

We had a very large front yard approximately 30 meters long and at the end of the cut grass there was a forest in a semi circle around it. And just at the edge of where the grass ended I could see several coyotes slinking through the woods. Their eyes glowed as they reflected the lights from the house and porch. The dogs were growling, barking and whining but as young as they were they were still waiting for me or Mom to give the command to release them to go and attack. But I knew it was a command I had no intention of giving. Just from my brief glimpse of the front yard forest I could see at least 6 coyotes. This was very puzzling to me.

I turned to Mom and asked, “Are those coyotes I'm seeing?”

“Pretty strange, right?” she responded.

You see, while a wolf will travel in a pack, coyotes are very much cowardly loners. They are not hunters, they are scavengers and even a small child like me could easily scare them away. So why were they in a pack, standing their ground and actually trying to lure our two little dogs off the porch?

Even though it was still early autumn and no snow on the ground, my dad had not come home from work that night and Mom was not comfortable using one of his rifles. But no matter how much light flicking, noise making and cooking pot banging we did, those coyotes just would not leave! And we were also having a very difficult time trying to keep our dogs from dashing into the fray. They were not tied up and we eventually managed to get them into the house and through to the kitchen porch for them to sleep out the remainder of the night. We left all the porch lights on and headed back to bed ourselves.

The next evening when Dad finally made it home and we were discussing the events over supper he simply refused to believe our version of what had happened. He would not believe they were coyotes.

“Firstly,” Dad began, “ Coyotes don’t travel in packs. And they would have no interest in our dogs. They would probably be after small animals like chickens. But since we don’t have chickens and only beef cows, they wouldn’t even bother to make a stop at our farm. You probably just caught sight of a couple wolves passing through.”

I was as angry at my father as I had ever been. It was bad enough that we had been left to deal with this by oursleves, but to treat it with such a flippant attitude and act like we were too stupid to know the difference between a wolf and a mangey coyote. Arrg!

Mom and I exchanged glances and knew that if it occurred again, we were on our own.

*Click on LINK below to read the conclusion in Part 2.

LINK to Gadarene Coyotes PART 2

Gadarene Coyotes Part 2

* To the best of my recollection this story is true and occurred in 1973. LLR

Gadarene Coyotes  Part 2

About a week passed and we never saw any sight of the pack of coyotes, so we figured it had just been a fluke and gratefully let it slip from our minds. Until the following Friday night. Once again Dad was not at home and instead of merely half a dozen coyotes there were a dozen or more. I came padding down the steps to discover Mom calling to the dogs and  trying to get them to return to the front porch. They were so intent on defending us that they had gone right onto the front lawn and were heading to the forest where the coyotes were skulking and slithering amongst the trees. I could see their eyes glowing in the light and they would nip at the dogs then run into the trees. It was obvious they were luring the dogs out in order to attack them.

Mom asked me to command the dogs back to the house because she knew I had a way with animals but Husky and Trapper simply would not heed me and just stood their ground in order to protect us.

I turned to Mom and shook my head and continued to watch the coyotes and their glowing eyes and sinister actions and then finally I said calm and cool, “If it was up to me I’d grab Dad’s shotgun and blow all their brains out!”

Mom gave me a look that clearly demonstrated she could not believe she was hearing those words come out of her sweet seven year old daughter.

The problem with using the rifles is that the shotgun was too heavy for Mom to lift and she didn’t have enough strength in her hands to load the 30-0-6. I was pretty good with a 22 but it wouldn’t have done enough damage. I could have wounded several of them, but they were hostile enough and injuring them without killing them could have easily made things worse, not better.

Once again, working together, Mom and I managed to get the dogs into the farmhouse to sleep out the rest of the night.

We figured Dad wouldn’t be home for the remainder of the weekend so while we were in our local town the next day we decided to go into a hunting store and bought some chains so we could at least keep the dogs from running into the trees to chase the coyotes and probably be ripped to shreds. We told the storekeeper what was going on at our farm and he treated us like a couple of hysterical women. Giving us the same speech as Dad did about it not being coyotes because only wolves travel in packs and they wouldn’t be interested in attacking our dogs, etc, etc. But he sold us a bunch of chains anyway.

That very night the coyotes came back and Husky, our German Shepherd not even a year old, broke the chain like it was thread. And my sneaky terrier slimed his way out of his collar, not wanting to be left behind.

We went back to the storekeeper, told him what happened and he sold us some more expensive chain that was “guaranteed to never break”. Well, that night our evil coyotes came back and Husky did not break the chain. Instead the chain held and he removed an entire section of our front porch with him to go after the evil coyotes.

By now the coyotes had become a nightly event and they continued to grow in numbers each time.

We simply could not figure out what was going on. 

Our only livestock was beef cattle and they were all alive and well the next morning so we didn’t know what the coyotes were gaining by constantly returning to our farm each night. It seemed they only wanted to attack us and our dogs. Their howling and barking and growling and those glowing eyes and constantly increasing numbers were starting to freak us out.

I was having lots of nightmares and Mom had stopped sleeping altogether because she believed it was her duty to stand guard, just like the dogs were.

Then, finally it happened. They came on a night when Dad was at home. When he came clumping down the stairs in the middle of the night in response to all the coyote noise. Mom and I were already in our positions.

We stepped aside to let him look outside the front door. The dogs were chained to the porch and standing quietly growling while at least 30 coyotes ran around our front yard. We were pretty frightened! Mom and I at the end of our ropes just like the dogs as the end of their chains.

Dad watched quietly for about five minutes and then finally uttered, “All be darn. You weren’t making it up.”

He walked into the kitchen, grabbed his shotgun and 30-0-6 and a bunch of bullets. Then spent the next 30 minutes doing target practice. And it wasn’t much of a practice because he was a very good shot.

Before he started pulling the trigger Mom had quickly grabbed the dogs and brought them into the house. Dad hated our dogs because our dogs instinctively hated Dad and he would have needed very little motivation to do an “Oops! Sorry. I accidently killed your dogs!” (Which is eventually what did happen to them). 

By the time Dad was ready to head back to bed he mumbled, ”I’ll clean up all the dead bodies tomorrow.” He put his rifles away, went back to bed and was asleep within 10 minutes.

The story of our coyotes spread throughout the community and it wasn’t until some months later that someone offered an explanation along the lines of “It might have been a situation like the ‘Gadarene Swine’.”  Whatever that was I didn’t know.

(Luke 8:26-39)

It was many years later, after I became a Christian when I read the Bible story about a bunch of demons who Jesus cast into a pack of pigs in an area called Gadarene. The pigs went insane with all the demons inside and ran off a cliff to their death.

In our farming community of Bergen there were a lot of Christians so when they heard about the strange and evil actions of a large amount of coyotes, they came up with the conclusion they were demon possessed. And now when I look back with my twenty-twenty hindsight, my 41 years of knowing Jesus and what was going on in our family at the time I believe our neighbours had come up with the accurate conclusion.

Brothers and Sisters, never forget that we are in a spiritual battle that intensifies the moment we pick a side. And there is no such thing as fence sitting in this war. If you are not for Jesus, you are against Him. Open your Bible, put on the full armor of God (Ephesians 6) and know that no weapon formed against you will prosper (Isaiah 54:17).

You have nothing to fear because “greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

 Laura-Lee Rahn

Edmonton, AB, CANADA

Swine from Gadarene demon possessed and running off the cliff to their death after Jesus cast all of them out of one man.