Girl Who Kicked & Coyotes

I’m in the middle of the third in the Steig Larsson trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, and I now know what the word inundated means: I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of Swedish names and places, way over my head in Edklinth, Kungsholmen, Björck, Ulvskog, Nyström, Göteborg, Borgsjö, KFB (Kalle Fucking Blomkvist), and about a million others of the same ilk. It’s all very interesting but oh so complicated regarding the investigation of Säpo and the Zalachenko club. And Lisbeth Salander has been in bed in the hospital recovering from her wounds for over half the novel. I want more of this girl who has so captivated me and the rest of the world. I want to see her in action, not just lying there recuperating. Damn you, Steig Larsson, you who have so intrigued me yet frustrated me. No, I don’t mean that, Steig. May you rest in peace wherever you are.

A few days ago, two of the biggest coyotes we’ve ever seen wandered through our backyard, sort of going through the back hedges, trying to scare up something edible. No luck in our yard, so they wandered down the property lines to the north. They certainly didn’t look very hungry. And that leads to the other side of the subject: residents who are so afraid of coyotes they call the State Wildlife to have them removed or trapped and killed. About six weeks ago there was an old Snow Bird who was walking her dog near one of our golf courses, and she swears she and her dog were attacked by three young coyotes. So Fish and Game hired a private contractor to come in, trap the three, and kill them. How stupid. The coyotes in our city limits are part of the charm of Sun City West, and none of them would even bother to attack a resident. Now, tiny pets running loose are another matter. But they have an unlimited supply of natural game here, like millions of rabbits. Without the coyotes, owls, and hawks, we’d be up to our asses in rabbits. We need the coyotes, and we need to keep them here.