Karla's Kolumn: Another episode of 'Life in the Country'

It's time for another installment of life in the country.

Let's start off with this morning, well OK, let us backtrack a little bit first. We have a sliding glass door that goes out into our backyard and looks across the way to our neighbor's field. My dogs love to watch the variety of animals that meander on the hill near the field.

Sometimes, as most dog owners know, these animals are real, and sometimes, I swear, they are imaginary. Most of the fall and winter the dogs were able to watch the deer meander one way in the morning and back the other direction in the afternoon. About a week ago they were very excited to see two raccoons running around the hill.

They have watched our outdoor kitties meander over there as well.

One day they were tormented by some pheasants. Now we don't let them out when the deer are there but the other animals seem to know there is a fence, a ditch and road that separates them from our dogs. The rabbits don't worry too much when they are on the neighbor's hill and this one day, the pheasant seemed to figure out the noisy dogs could not reach him so he strutted up and down the ditch road, as if to say "catch me if you can, because I know you can't."

For the most part the animals stay over on the hill and don't meander over onto our property. However, I believe I have mentioned the fox that was napping in our loafing shed once, and there was the pheasant that was spooked by hunters who thought he found a quiet hiding place in some tumbleweeds only to be rousted out by our Ivy. Maybe that's the same one that was tormenting her this year. (The pheasant did escape Ivy on that particular day.)

Some deer wandered onto the property last fall, trying to get to the garden, and to the Russian olives my husband had cut down.

And there have been the two bull snakes up by the house, one an adult and one a youngster.

All that being said, that brings us to Friday morning. As I said sometimes I think the dogs see imaginary animals. They start barking ferociously and I go to look and see nothing. It could be the rabbit, pheasant or other critter or bird has moved out of sight by then, but I wonder.

This morning was different. For one, they weren't looking over toward the neighbor's they were looking in the opposite direction and you could tell by the bark what they saw was something different. I wandered over expecting to see nothing, or perhaps a little finch.

Nope, it was a coyote who was walking by our propane tank, not that far from the house. I hollered (so as to be heard over now three dogs barking at the coyote) at my husband, he grabbed a firearm and we went out the front door and the coyote was now out of sight.

Back in the house we went and we opened the back door. Shadow charged out but didn't see the coyote either, stopping at the corner of the house. Ivy was wandering around inside the house until Alan told her it was OK to go get the coyote. She bounded out and must have caught the scent as she took off running and then we saw the coyote running and then Shadow followed Ivy in hot pursuit of the coyote. We watched, and just a few short minutes later they come back from the corner of the property, running proudly, for a job well done of chasing the coyote off the property.

And in case you're wondering what our third, and oldest dog Sarah did during all this, after barking when she saw the coyote, she let the younger dogs do the chasing and she went and had breakfast. She takes after her "momma."