by Tamra Lucid.
I was introduced to them as Johnny’s coyotes. That’s what the neighbors called the pack of wild canines living in the overgrown backyard of Johnny Depp’s Bavarian castle at the end of a cul de sac off the Sunset Strip. Even though it wasn’t true, tour guides told each new generation of tourists that it had belonged to Bela Lugosi.
It looks suitable for a vampire: gothic, with stone turrets partially hidden by gloomy dark green trees. Johnny had the trees trucked in and planted full grown so it looked as though the trees had moved in after him, though he never really moved in, in the sense of staying there for long periods of time. Neighbors who live up the hill above the castle can glimpse his backyard below. They saw him once in his bathrobe drinking coffee in the morning. That’s what the coyotes liked about it. It was private and quiet.
I guess you could say that Coyote Spring began one morning when a wealthy woman woke up from a dream about a castle in Los Angeles. She believed in that dream and she had the money to realize it. Surprisingly quickly it became a dilapidated yet romantic boarding house for Hollywood actors and writers.
The castle saw glamorous parties again when Barry Gordy restored it. Hundreds of Motown and Hollywood celebrities enjoyed the luxury and the swimming pool of the castle on the Sunset Strip in the Quaalude and cocaine fueled Hollywood of the 1970s. But after Gordy sold it the castle returned to its customary decrepitude.
Johnny Depp bought it in the ’90s, and a few houses around it, one of which became his recording studio. He also bought penthouses downtown, and an island, and other beautiful places, all preferable to Sunset Boulevard, which would soon cease to be the epicenter of rock and roll.
Even a coyote can get startled. I’ve seen it myself several times and even caused it. For example, picture my well-fed, formerly feral, big black boy cat sleeping on a cat tree in a corner of floor to ceiling windows in the hills over Los Angeles. Four in the morning, sleeping upstairs, I woke up to a thump downstairs I knew was someone hitting the window. A freaked out cat? An even more freaked out neighbor? I must investigate.
The boy cat slept, unperturbed. Something wasn’t making sense here. On a hunch I stood just behind the Chinese screen that partially blocked the sliding glass door. About a minute later a coyote gingerly stepped into view. He poked his nose up towards the sleeping boy cat to catch his scent. He eyeballed my cat like he was a roasted turkey on display at a buffet. I saw the coyote, but he didn’t see me. So I stepped out and said: “What do you think you’re doing?” His jaw dropped. Literally, his lower jaw went slack. He couldn’t believe that a human could sneak up on him, but I did. I couldn’t believe a coyote could go slack-jawed, but he did.
“Don’t you ever fuck with my cat!” I warned, shaking my finger at him. He picked his jaw back up and ran behind the furthest potted plant. When he took a peek from behind that big ceramic pot I pointed right at him. “That’s right!” He ran all the way down the driveway.
A few nights later I heard a big pack of coyotes on the hill behind my backyard yipping and whining so loudly all the domestic dogs in the canyon went silent. But the next night no howls echoed the passing sirens. At first the natural balance remained undisturbed. Squirrels, possums, skunks, raccoons, and rats visited swimming pools to drink and cool off on hot summer nights, a miniature Serengeti waterhole.
A family of raccoons commandeered my pool one night like an Airbnb rental. Five baby raccoons splashed on the pool steps under the watchful gaze of their parents who took a quick dip. The parents easily climbed over the pool wall while the kits stood on their hind legs and reached as high as they could, frantic until shown the long way around. Feral cats supported by elderly neighbors flourished and routinely sampled the catnip growing in my garden. Many a hot afternoon luminous green bamboo sprays cast a filigree shadow over a napping feline. Occasionally coyote howling erupted as an ambulance navigated Sunset Boulevard.
Then the other animals began disappearing, and the pack became so big they photo bombed security cameras across several canyons. Neighbors warned each other to keep their pets indoors.
That’s when the pandemic lockdown created a silence in the neighborhood unheard since 1920, when the city had only 600,000 residents and only a few scattered hunting lodges dotted the hills. The only thing the actors who owned them were hunting for was a place to get drunk without worrying about getting caught breaking Prohibition laws.
For reasons unknown to the coyotes it seemed humans were hiding in their dens, so the coyotes came forth from the castle and took over the streets. One sat on a brick mailbox on Hollywood Boulevard in broad daylight. They trotted down the center of the street at noon. So this is what it would be like after humans, thoughtful observers wondered: coyote town. In the past they had only been heard at night. Now the unafraid and triumphant coyotes howled all day, whenever a siren wailed by. More sirens than usual reverberated off the hills, rushing pandemic victims to hospitals.
One night I heard something knock into a box of empty bottles outside. Looking down from the second story window I saw what looked like the back and the tail of a dog. Then I noticed two other dogs had pinned a smaller dog against a potted plant in my driveway. I realized they were coyotes. Every time the smaller coyote tried to get away the bigger coyotes would step in the way, snarling and biting. The smaller one finally made a break for it to the middle of the driveway but the biggest coyote lit out after and they tumbled, silencing the crickets. A coyote lawn fight right there under my carport.
The smaller bolted down the driveway. The victor turned his back on him striding back up the driveway. A little later that night I saw him again, one of the biggest coyotes I’ve ever seen. He stood on the roof of my carport like Fuck of the Mountain surveying the city lights, taking in the scents on the breeze stirring the rustling palm fronds glistening moonlight. When he noticed me watching him he didn’t’t even flinch. This was his territory now.
A coyote couple took up residence behind our house. At first we only saw him. A male staking claim in a small corner of the pack’s territory? I figured there must be pups involved in this new arrangement. Then I saw her and her visible nipples proved my theory. She was young and small with an injured foot but still nimble enough and quick. He was handsome and bold.
One afternoon I was watering the bamboo where feral cats no longer reclined. The smaller coyote strolled past with a glance like a dog. “So that’s how it is?” I asked. She hopped up on a low fence, disappearing behind a wall. I thought she had left. But a moment later her head popped up over the wall. She watched me with an intelligent inquisitive stare.
Having coyotes take up residence behind my house was nothing less than wilderness impinging on my domicile, walking on my stepping-stones, singing with the sirens day and night. I’d yell shut up at them in the middle of the night through the open bathroom window. They ignored me. The rest of the pack would visit, gathering in the driveway and behind the backyard wall to yip, yawp and whine, sounding like a family reunion of gossips talking over each other. The coyotes had not yet realized that they were squatters on someone else’s land.
About ten years ago a pool was built at the top of the hill behind a house owned by someone who actually lives faraway in France and hardly ever visits. The pool stands on two concrete stilts. I could count on one hand how many times I’ve seen someone use it. But the pool is much more than a monument to hubris and possibly bribery.
While the water glistened undisturbed in the sun like a ceremonial pond, underneath the pool, in the deep shade of the supportive structure, generations of ravens have been born. The ravens had been away enjoying another part of their territory. They were not pleased to find coyotes on their hill.
Two ravens informed dad coyote that he was in the wrong place. One swooped silently and then loudly cawed just above and behind him, startling him. They circled, cackling at him. The ravens landed near him, surprisingly large and fearless birds. They barked at the silent coyote. As they took off, turning upwards, the coyote’s eyes were shaded by their wings. When mom came out to inspect she got the same treatment.
Once I saw dad coyote lunge at a raven flying too close but the bird was much too fast, wheeled around, swooped claws out, and sent the coyote reeling. The coyote gathered himself and turned to walk away not too quickly, as if he made the decision on his own that this confrontation with a mere bird was not worth his time. The loud croaks of the raven pair echoed like laughter in the canyon. Every time a coyote poked his or her face out of the den the ravens went to work.
Well, of course, all that noise eventually brought out the neighbors. Suddenly a bald guy with a goatee and sunglasses was stomping around in the long grass looking for the cause of the disturbance. A bluejay squawked at him. Dogs barked all over the neighborhood. My sunglasses, hair and the camera lens reflected sunlight as I tried to capture a portrait. Not only had the coyotes attracted a crowd, food had become scarce. The pack had eaten every local animal including all the feral cats, and a little pet dog grabbed from behind a six-foot wall a coyote easily leaped.
The last time I saw him, hungry, and constantly feeling conspicuous, dad coyote didn’t’t seem so bold anymore. He had become apprehensive and a touch sheepish in the shoulders and eyes. He knew now that he had chosen the wrong homestead. That night the sirens on Sunset Boulevard had no accompanists. The coyotes had moved on. The entire pack had left the neighborhood like marauding invaders do when they’ve used up all the resources.
My nearly homeless neighbor illegally living in her condemned house had tended and made rescues from a colony of feral cats who had lived in the hills for generations. When she died our good neighbor Tom, sociable and helpful, a sincerely Catholic old man, worried about her cats. One of the cats, a beautiful gray female with the look of a Russian Blue, had come up and looked him right in the eye. This cat ran to him every morning and evening. She rubbed his leg as he brought the colony food. He could pick up and carry this charming cat. Through her he had learned in his old age to love cats, an animal he had once disliked.
Tom cooked for the cats. He did the carpenter work for a carpeted and heated shelter for winter. And when the coyotes came he took his cats indoors, where they taught him to be only a little less fastidious. Every once in awhile he sent me a frantic email because she had not come home. That gray beauty who had been the first cat to look him in the eye. I could usually reassure him that I had seen her basking under the bamboo. When she came home he baby-talked her in his thick southern Slavic accent. You could hear him down the block.
Tom had lived in the neighborhood longer than anyone else. He had seen it change for the worse for decades while the houses got more expensive and the neighbors more isolated. The way Tom saw it, Johnny’s coyotes were the many horsemen of the apocalypse.
At the end of his life, a never-ending construction site just a few feet away on his side of the hill tormented Tom. Sawdust coated his shelves and everything on them. The noise accompanied him to his last day. Maybe he’ll smile, shaking his head in heaven, when the tables are turned and the demolition of his house begins to clear the way for new construction just as the construction next door that tormented him ends.
This morning I noticed how empty his house felt. The little candlelit patio where we’d hear him in the distance laughing with friends he had cooked lovely dinners for seemed hollow and muted. The familiar old Mercedes engine that had revved up at regular times of day ever since I moved in had disappeared into the silence. I asked a neighbor he was okay and found out he had died weeks ago.
I posted some photos I took of the ravens and coyotes. A friend noticed. He recognized the two coyotes who had lived on the hill. He also knew that they had moved their pups into Laurel Canyon, right across the street from his house. He sent me a photo. Under wild red roses in the abandoned garden of an empty and decaying two story Mediterranean with a faded and broken red tile roof, two coyote pups nestled together in an old flower pot.
It took over a year for the locals to return. First a mouse nuzzled through intertwined vines of orange and red nasturtium blossoms. Then a squirrel dashed by the sliding glass door, in his mouth a candy bar still in its wrapper stolen from who knows where. A few days later I saw the squirrel standing on his hind legs, his head inside half a tangelo. Next the shadow of a feral cat slinked by in the early evening. A few months later a raccoon took a stroll around our garden at midnight under a full moon. Then the confident trot of a skunk whose nose swept like a metal detector as he searched for a tasty beetle. But so far the possums have not come back. The ravens remain. They were here before there was a city. They were here before the Tongya wore their feathers. They will be here when the city is ruins or under the Pacific. The ravens will rise from their island hilltop to ride the thermals, spiraling and diving through the sky, in pure joy of flight.
