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The Clumsy Coatimundi

Sometimes I think my dog, Coffee Girl, is too cosseted. For instance I usually let her off-leash on mountain bike rides unless the road has faster traffic, or she is bothering free-range cattle. On the return trips later in the morning, she also gets snapped back on, since she doesn't care by then. When it is over 75 F and the rattlesnake risk is higher, she also gets snapped on, whether she likes it or not.

(By the way, the best way to control a dog when mountain biking, is to put a carabiner on the end of her lease, and snap it to a belt around your waist.)

A couple mornings ago, we were riding and running on an enjoyable, recently-graded road. Then a long-tailed animal darted across the road about 50 yards ahead of us. I recognized it as a coatimundi, a type of raccoon with a long monkey-tail. It was only the second one that I've ever seen. Naturally Coffee Girl threw all caution to the wind and took off after the coatimundi.

Wikipedia has an interesting article on the coati. Not surprisingly, this coatimundi climbed up the first tree it could find. Not surprisingly Coffee Girl had her hackles out at 90 degrees and was whimpering/barking with the strangest sounds she has ever made.

A long-tailed coatimundi. I never realized how difficult it is to take a photo when the brightness of the sky drowns the subject of the photograph.
The tree-ed coatimundi was behaving oddly, too. It was about 15 feet up in the tree, but it kept trying to climb higher. The branches kept getting weaker like that; and for a moment I thought the crazy animal was going to fall out of the tree and land right on the barking fool dog's head.

Then things really took a bizarre turn. The beastie starting climbing down the tree! What was it thinking? That some referee was going to blow the whistle for a 'time-out', and that my 44 pound dog was just going to grant a 20 pound prey 'safe passage' to the next tree?

The coatimundi looking down on the damn fool dog, barking her head off.

The damn fool coatimundi descending the tree, where my dog was waiting for it.
A few seconds before we could find out, I let out a "Come here!", the likes of which my dog has never heard before, and she came back to me to get snapped back on her leash. The coatimundi then scrambled over to the next tree.

What was going on with that creature? They are supposed to be excellent at tree climbing. Perhaps it had never been chased by a dog before, and thought the dog could climb as well; and that it needed to climb higher to get safe?

At any rate, no harm was done to anybody. And the coatimundi now understands dogs a little better. Gee, do you think when Trump gets his wall built, that coatimundis will stop sneaking up from Central America to invade the USA?

Comments

I redacted a comment from John V to keep the location more vague:

We saw one of those things [near Safford,AZ.] We've been wondering for the last week what it was. The dogs weren't with us, so that [Safford] coatimundi is still dog ignorant.
They are pretty exotic looking, aren't they?
Ed said…
I have only seen a coti in the wild on one occasion and when I did there was a band of them. They usually travel in bands of 6 or more so the one that you saw may have been as intent on joining back up as he was avoiding Coffee Girl.
Jackpineseed said…
That is one of the great aspects of mountain biking,getting up close and personal with nature. Kudos to Coffee Girl for coming on command. What a rush it must have been for all three 'creatures' involved!
Anonymous said…
Off topic, but would you share (without giving up your location) what Mayberry-for-Hippies, AZ is? Did I miss this in an earlier post?

Chris
Yes indeed, it was a rush. I probably made more noise than the other two animals involved. I sneak up on animals pretty easily on a mountain bike. You'd think that they would hear it easier.
Chris, email me for the name of the town.

In general you know that there are boondocking blabber-mouth blogs on the internet. Some of them are RV organizations. Some are Brand X affinity groups. I don't want to publicize locations and help those people broadcast the location, make a buck off of it, and help ruin it.
Anonymous said…
Yeah, unfortunately it's true that a nice location can get ruined by blabbermouths. I well remember telling one RVer in person about a little-known place, she blog-blabbed it, and ever since it's always been well-occupied every time I swing by. Lesson learned. :(

At least this incident shows that Coffee Girl is still a youthful pup at heart.
Gee, I'll bet I can guess who "she" was. But that would be "ad hominem", and we have a policy against that here. (grin)
Boonster, that little coati is a fearless animal and would quickly have about any dog running. CG would be no match for it. Think wolverine...