Early in my teens, I was walking one day on a rural dirt road between an alfalfa field and a berm, and noticed a coyote, behind and to my left in the alfalfa. A minute later, I looked again and found that it was closer; when I stopped it stopped, and when I was walking it was closing in on me. When I turned to look at it, it was seemingly entranced by the alfalfa, trying to look like it hadn't noticed me at all. This went on for about half a mile.

Why would a coyote be so desperate as to stalk a 13-year-old, even if alone and more than a mile from any other human? It occurred to me that the coyote might be rabid or have some other problem that kept it from realizing how much bigger I was than it.

It turns out that I was walking to the rifle range, and I had a loaded rifle on its sling. The coyote did not pose an immediate threat and so I had no intention of shooting, but I did unsling the rifle.

As soon as the rifle's silhouette broke away from the lines of my body the coyote took off, never to be seen again. Whatever it wanted with me, it discovered that there was urgent business to attend to elsewhere when the rifle came into my hands.