Stig is howling. The yard is full of bogles, he says. Sometimes this means he has torn apart enemies that are half-destroyed tennis balls. This time there’s a coyote in the neighbourhood, and it’s helping itself to small cats, dogs, rabbits, young raccoons, chipmunks, anything in its path – any animal in the vicinity. We ask that Stig be taken out on a leash in the nighttime. His instinct is to spring and to destroy perceived animal enemies but are not sure of his strength; we fear he is no match for a wily coyote. “Wile E. Coyote,” we say, to ourselves, as Stig hears nature taking its brutish course outside. He used to enjoy nighttime bunny-watching, but rabbits are in short supply lately.
“And why do you suppose there’s a dearth of rabbits,” we ask, as we snap the leash onto his collar. “Last spring we saw a dozen a night.” We wouldn’t be surprised if we saw the lawns littered with bones and shreds. Even unlucky squirrels, squashed while running across the road, have been scraped up and eaten. Not a scrap left. The coyote population has doubled, trebled, and is unstoppable.
“The rat population is burgeoning as well,” Stig notes. Last summer we saw two of them nosing carelessly on the back porch while Stig was asleep upstairs. We were horrified, and Banksy shrugged. “You can’t stop rats. Unless you want to put warfarin everywhere, and I can’t agree to that.”
“You can stop rats. Stop putting out garbage for them to feast upon.” Is this ironic? It sounds ironic, and we grin as soon as Banksy has left the room.
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