I saw the coolest thing this morning

This morning I came in and sat down at the computer to start work on mapping out my training for the rest of the season. Just a few minutes into it, I thought I heard a dog growling. This wasn't a low friendly, get out of my way or else growl, but something more guttural. That kind of growl that's in response to being pushed; the "I don't want to do this, but if you make me" kind of growl. At first I thought someone might just be playing rough with their dog - I've heard some pretty mean sounding dogs when they're just playing.

Then I heard it again. It dawned on me that didn't sound like something coming from inside the building, it sounded like it was coming from outside my window. I headed out to the balcony, and as I walked out and started looking down in the arroyo that my balcony overlooks I heard it again, followed by a flurry of activity. Through the bushes, I could see something taking off toward the street with two something's chasing it. I couldn't make out what took off, but the two somethings looked an awful lot like javalina.

A split second later, a coyote popped out of the arroyo and started looking back to where I had just heard all the commotion. Then I got my confirmation of what was chasing him, I started hearing teeth click. This kept up for a few minutes, the coyote having a truly astonished look on his face. If he would have had digits, I'm sure he would have been scratching his head. After the javalina started to calm down and two of them (one of the older ones and the younger one I took a picture of before), the coyote took the round about way back down into the arroyo. There was some more clicking - apparently one stayed behind - and growling, then he popped back out and trotted off.

Now I'm curious what's down there. The one javalina stayed pretty wounded up for the coyote to be 20 feet away and acting like he was trying to stay out of their way. I never heard any yelping, and if there's one thing I know about coyotes it's that they are extremely vocal little critters. If a javalina would have pinned on of them, people 4 blocks away would have known about it. And the javalina generally aren't meat eaters so they would be trying to run a coyote off of a kill or anything.

And sorry, no pictures this time. I came back in to get my camera as soon as I saw all of the action start up, but I had it on the other side of the apartment. I was afraid of missing something, so I had to stay and watch.