Eerie Yipping

Nothing quite like waking up at 2:00 AM for no go reason and not being able to fall back to sleep. Well other than waking to the eerie chirping of coyotes roaming the streets. They seem to do that on Wednesday nights because it's trash day on Thursday.

My guess is that it gives them an opportunity to feed off of garbage that is not properly contained in the big green cans provided by the local waste management company. While doing so they may find a stray cat or other animal to feast on. No matter that chirping and yipping they do is really friggin' creepy! After all of these years of hearing them I am still not use to the sounds, yet it's interesting to hear how they use it to communicate several different situations.

Yips & Yaps

To better understand what they are talking about amongst themselves at a time of the night when silence is appreciated I searched out additional information on the subject while getting my morning coffee-buzz going. Although many of the sounds are similar to me, I do hear quite a bit of distinction at times and the follow descriptions do actually shed some light on it all. Pretty interesting stuff actually and this is only scratching the surface of their communication techniques.

• Challenge howls
• Territorial howls
• Territorial warning howls
• Laughing and whooping noises for intimidation
• Howls indicating danger
• Directional short barks and crying to identify or point out danger or a territory intruder
• Howls indicating loneliness
• Locator howls
• Chants that celebrate reuniting with other pack members
• Chants celebrating a pack kill
• Mating howls (to attract or compete for a mate)
• Territorial barks
• Barks in combination with throat undulations for scolding another coyote (less violent form of territorial communication)
• Yelping to signify submission
• Yelps to signify distress
• Yips to taunt

Storm On The Horizon

Well as mentioned yesterday, the weather guessers are predicting a snowy drive home tonight as well as in the morning for our commute (oh joy). As of now, there has been zero snow in the valley but it is cold enough outside for it, brr! And by cold I don't just mean a little nippy, rather the kind of cold that shoots right through all of the layers you are wearing in direct route to the bone. I guess I will have to just wait and see if and when the white stuff starts to fall.

TTYL

Super busy day once again now that I am assigned to 2 additional games due to another team member going to the "special teams" project that I was not interested in this go-round. Because of this I am doing my previously scheduled work and at the same time one of his games that needs to be modified "stat" as well as picking up on his originally assigned FY-2013 project.

On top of all of this, I have been tasked with mentoring one of his team members now that there will be no-one for that developer to report to or learn our processes from. No biggie really, just a lot of things to figure out since I am jumping on multiple trains that are already in motion.

Photo: Coyote in the brush (credit: unknown)