so, you might be wondering about the title. I got this idea from a Calvin and Hobbes strip, where Calvin writes an autobiography with some parts completely made up. I will be realizing these whenever a good idea strikes me.

I grew up on a coyote farm in Mexico.

I know that sounds weird, but some people grow up on dairy farms. Some people grow up on normal farms. Me, I grew coyote farm.

It was really awesome waking up in the morning, with the coyotes howling. They usually started howling at 10 o’ clock, or earlier if it was the full moon. They were better than any rooster.

Then we’d have breakfast. I usually had bread and jam, my mother had a fruit and cold coyote milk. My grandmother on my mother’s side was called Granny Granny, because I couldn’t say her real name, Penny, when I was a baby, so she became Granny Granny. Granny Granny had some mushed oatmeal, and my father had some cold cuts. But my grandfather, who I called Gramps, usually ate an entire coyote, bones and all, washed it down with two pots of coffee and four fried eggs, then marched off to round up the coyotes.

Rounding them up was the most important job on the farm, because once we didn’t round up the coyotes, and four of them got out and killed three cows and eight pigs, and the farmers they belonged to shot them. They arrived at our front door with four mangled carcasses which they threw down on the front porch and asked for our wallets, pointing their shotguns in our faces. I went inside and pulled out all the credit cards and only left about 110 pesos. I gave the farmers the money and they took it and laughed at us and walked off the the liquor store with cries of “Tontos, tontos” and “no nos sigas o te cortaremos como cerdos.” That kind of thing happens a lot here.

Anyways, to round up the coyotes, Gramps would go to the coat-wall. The coat-wall was the wall where we hung our coats and hats and stuff. Gramps would pick old-fashioned six-shooters from the coat-wall and stuff his belt full with them. Then he would saddle and mount his horse, Galloping Gargoyle, and ride out into the coyote field, shooting his guns so they echoed around for miles. It sounded like he was shooting a cannon. All the coyotes would run away from his gun and he’d run around and around the field to make sure that no coyotes were left. Then he’d slowly work his way inward until all the coyotes were inside a small pen. You’d think that we could train the coyotes to do what we wanted but we never trained a single one in the twenty years I was on the farm.

One of the coyotes was called Old Grey. He was the biggest one on the farm, almost higher than Galloping Gargoyle’s shoulder. He had doggish claws and long sharp teeth. We knew for a fact that Old Grey sharpened his teeth on our flagpole. We’d see him at it in wintertimes. Once he almost killed Gramps. Gramps was sounding up the coyotes, as usual, but Old Grey was shying away from Gramps. When Gramps got off Galloping Gargoyle to see what was going on, Old Grey jumped onto Gramps’s chest. I saw what was happening to Gramps from the kitchen window, and I called Granny Granny: “Hey, Old Grey just jumped on Gramps.”

Granny Granny went to the coat-wall and grabbed my brother’s 12-gauge off a hook, then jumped on the pony Barrel. We called it that because she was as round as a barrel. Granny Granny rode on Barrel to Old Grey and Gramps, took aim, and shot. Old Grey went as limp as a rag doll, and my Gramps screamed as blood ran from his arm. We cut the choice meats off of Old Grey, and gave the rest to the farmers who had lost cows and pigs to our coyotes. We heard their shotguns going all night. We had a great feast in the barn and toasted to Old Grey for the good meat. All except my Gramps. His arm hurt too much. After the meal, Gramps took Old Grey’s head in front of the other coyotes and filled it with shotgun pellets. We didn’t have much trouble for about a year after that.