* 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
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