I Like America and America Likes Me
I never saw the man's face or body, obscured as it was by the burlap robe- he carried it as best as I could remember it, a shepherd's cane and never removed that robe the entire week we spent in that New York loft. But he told me his name was Joseph and I had no reason to doubt him, although I was confused, scared and far from from the Arizona deserts I had grown accustomed to.
'What kind of crazy human being would handle a live coyote and live with him for a week?' I thought to myself. And why did he never remove that burlap robe- he would itch and scratch and sometimes maneuver his shepherd's cane and take pictures of me and him just spending time together, but like I said before he never did remove that burlap robe, at least not to the best of my knowledge. In time, he grew fond of me and called me America, as though I was the country who needed to be impressed by this strange man. But at least he was a good man to talk to over this week, as we were both trapped inside this loft in New York.
"Have you ever thought about art?" he would ask, "I've thought about art ever since the day that the Russians shot my Luftwaffte plane down and I ended up living for a few years with a primitive tribe of Siberians who had never seen modern plumbing or electricity. They took me back to civilization by arranging a sort of living hearse for me and covering my body in felt as we traveled across the Siberian wilderness. Isn't that how you got here as well?"
"Yes, yip." I would respond, in the best Human I could even though it was strongly flavored by a Coyote accent which even the best-trained among us cannot dispense with, filled with the occasional yip, yap, or howl at the end of sentences. "You were the one who ordered me, yip, taken across the country and taken here to New York, yap, and you look like the Grim Reaper. Now would you please let me see your face, yap." And Joseph would simply mumble incoherently as he examined his cane and set up yet another photo opportunity. This man who was once wrapped tightly in felt, must have felt at home in garments which covered his body from head to toe in robelike garments.
"You're not the first animal I've worked with, America- once I tried to explain photography to a bunny rabbit only to find that he passed away in my arms as I was explaining to him how to take a picture." The strange human showed me the picture- his face contorted and twisted like a human trying to explain himself as the rabbit stood still in his arms, dead.
"What did you to him, yap? Kill him!"
"No! The rabbit was dead when I found him and made this photo" What a strange, strange man I had met. A strange yet interesting man who had an entire lifetime of stories of being a fighter pilot in Nazi Germany, of waking up to the horrors of that evil empire, his emigration to the United States, and his highly unusual artwork, which consisted of odd photographs, palette-swapped paintings and all kinds of bizarre things to behold. Soon, something in my bowels told me that it was time to go outside.
"This is all nice and all but to be quite honest, yip, I need to crap pretty soon. Would you please, please take me with you on a walk? Cause I need to relieve myself, harrrrooooooo!"
"Why don't you just do your business here, America? We're two guys with the same stories and the same disrespect for rules and we're living together for a week. If it makes you feel any better, I don't intend on using a human toilet- a bucket maybe for everytime I need to piss and shit but other than that, I want to be a coyote. And you want to be a human." So I relieved myself in a corner obscured by a partition for privacy and finding these corners was how I relieved myself for an entire week, causing the crowded loft to become covered in an indescribably awful stench. I'm ashamed to admit it now but that's what a coyote does when its needs are not met for days on end. Now, we had plenty of food, the both of us- a local McDonald's provided us all the food we needed and I have to admit eating human food was amazing in its taste. But I was taken aback to see the robed man, who would partially remove his robe revealing his naked lower body as he relieved himself and threw the refuse out the window onto the unsuspecting crowd of New Yorkers below.
All in all, my time with this incredibly eccentric individual ranks high on my list of memories- as I started to learn a bit more human, he started to learn a bit more coyote and we became bilingual. He viewed me not as a pet but as an intellectual equal and our photos together became an opportunity forme to look my most adorable to a public which he told me would pay a good deal of money for those photos. What was in it for me,I asked. Well, he would move out west to Texas where the grass was greener, the sky was not encumbered by these pointless, and empty buildings and we would move out of this stinky human loft for something better and bigger. And I would never have to worry about being hunted down by human hunters ever again- I would be his pet until the day I died.
Though the loft we stayed grew increasingly smelly and undesirable with each passing day, we knew that we were born to be friends and at the very end I saw his face with the hood of his robe removed for one final photo opportunity between himself and me, the coyote he had become friends with and become acculturated towards.
And the very last words, he told me before we exited that stinky room together where we had spent one week together were these-
"I like America and America likes me."