The Mystery of the Missing Shoe

This morning, I walked out the front door, and saw this:




















A single, lonely, size 7.5 flat from Old Navy. This single shoe is one of a pair I got for 12* a couple of months ago. Why was the shoe outside? 12 left it out all night, with it's mate, to air out. She's entrenched in a brutal ongoing battle with bromidrosis. It's heinous. When it gets really bad, Mr.OM won't let her shoes stay in the house, and he forces her to wash her feet immediately upon returning home after school. Yesterday was a particularly pungent day, so these two requirements had to be met.

"But enc, enough already with the stinkfoot. We want to know why there was only one shoe left outside in the morning. Was the stench so bad that one shoe completely vaporized?" my Esteemed Readers may ask. "What happened to the other one?"

Coyotes got the other one. It's the only explanation.

There's a greenbelt across the street, only about fifty meters away. Coyotes live there. I've seen them and heard them. They leave the greenbelt and trot across the street at all hours, with utter nonchalance. And perhaps utter disdain. One can only guess.

One night, about two weeks ago, I put a bag of garbage outside, on the concrete right against the low wall (see photo below), intending to take it to the can in the garage the next morning. Until recently, this type of bag-resting maneuver would come off without incident, but this time was different. The coyotes were on the move. When I stepped outside in the morning, the bag had been shredded, and garbage was strewn everywhere. There were distinct bite holes in the bag. I wish I'd taken a picture. Mr. OM and I laughed about it as we cleaned it up.

Click to enlarge the scene of the Missing Shoe crime:





















On the night of May 17, 2006, the coyotes made a kill right outside my door.





















Here's part of a journal entry I made the day after the night of the killing:

5/18/06

There was a killing outside my front door last night. I slept right through it. When I figured out what had happened, I was disturbed. How on earth could I have been unaware of it when it was going on?

I saw the evidence when I came home from the gym this morning. I woke at 5am, and I left the house when it was still dark, so I never noticed the dried, smeared blood on the concrete just in front of my doormat. I also missed several large pawprints near the bloodstains. The prints were about two-and-a-half inches across, a series which spanned the walkway to my door. I don’t know what made me look down as I approached my door with my keys in hand, but when I did, I just stopped and stared. Most mornings I step outside in pitch black. I’ve often wondered if the coyotes venture down from their lair above and mill around in the complex. There’s ample cover in the form of low-growing shrubbery and trees, and what’s to stop them adventuring here? They must be able to smell the scent of the neighborhood cats and food and people. I began to ponder the possibility that I’m being watched as I exit my unit and walk to my car. What had happened here?

My thoughts turned to the obvious—perhaps there was an errant pet, and that deep rusty brown mess was just mud. But the dirt in the closest landscaping beds is deep brown, not russet, and this mess on the concrete was smeared. Also, none of the neighbors within closest proximity owns a dog. Only the young family across the way owns a dog big enough to make that size print, and he’s never off his leash. And anyway, who would let their dog run around loose in the middle of the night?

I can only assume it was a coyote. They live in the greenbelt across the street from my condo complex. The greenbelt stretches for about a mile, and it begins only about forty or fifty yards from my bedroom window. Two or three times I’ve been awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of them howling. I was told they do this only when they’re hunting and/or killing. It’s an eerie, disturbing sound. One coyote starts wailing, then another joins in, different pitches complementing each other. A third will add his voice to the mix, yipping and yapping, staccato notes punctuating the song of his henchmen and colleagues. A fourth will begin to bark, then the sound fans out until every other coyote within hearing distance throws his hat into the ring and the din is audible for at least a mile.

Most of the time, the howling emanates from several hundred yards away, inside the greenbelt. The sound carries quite clearly, and drifts down to my window—I’m downwind. It wakes me every time. One night a week or two ago, the noise seemed to come from the sidewalk which is just at the top of the bank of groundcover that lies to the east of the end of my building—only about thirty feet from my window. It was an eerie thought, knowing that the hunting creatures were only steps from my home.

To wake up and see evidence of that hunting in plain sight on the walkway in front of my door? Even more eerie.

And here are the photos I took that day in May:

Pawprints





















Blood


















More blood




















It feels a little like Wild Kingdom around here.

The shoe remains where it is, because nobody wants to touch it—it's too funkified. I can't imagine the coyotes would have wanted to keep the other shoe after they noticed the aroma. It's nowhere to be found on the nearby grounds. I joked to Mr.OM that it would be funny if we came outside tomorrow morning, and saw that the coyotes had taken the other shoe. I bet they're not that foolish, though.

Mr.OM is playing a gig downtown tonight, and probably won't be home until 3am. As he was leaving, I said "mind you don't get dragged away by coyotes as you come to the door tonight, dear!"

I kissed him and sent him on his way.




*12 is Mr.OM's daughter.




(Images from me)