Our little Trickster Girl, two years gone.

Photo copyright Aji, 202; all rights reserved.

It would be the last photo I ever took of her, although we didn't know that at the time. Today is hard day for other reasons, too, specifically a marker of yet another human loss, but the one that breaks us both is this one: our little Trickster Girl, two years gone.

She was one of the first of the ferals, she and her littermate who we called Crow. Littermates to Cricket, too, apparently, and tricksters all, starved, abused, neglected, and near death, and they all wormed their way into our hearts. She and Crow brought Cricket and three others, and then all but one stayed permanently, or as permanently as can be with ferals used to wandering at will . . . with too often inevitable results. Crow and Blue had vanished, as though into thin air, a little over 2 months prior, although we know, as surely as it is possible to know without having witnessed the act itself, what happened to them, and at whose hands as well. Coyote had stayed behind that day, and she became velcroed to us in spirit as well as in fact.

Crow and Cricket got their names in part from their black coats, but Coyote, Ashawinoodese in my language, was the beautiful golden-buff shade of a coyote pup. She was fierce, and just as predatory, too; we lost a chicken or two to the fact of her early starvation before she found us, and she nearly got two more (Bent-Beak, whose beak was bent nearly from hatching, not from the dog, is now the infamous zombie chicken who resurrected herself, regrew her entire lush Americauna tail, and is now thriving as one the alpha matriarchs in the coop). But it was not Coyote's fault, and we knew that; starved from birth, by the time she found us, at probably four months of age, the need to hunt for baseline survival was long since ingrained.

But the vanishing of her sister changed her, kept her close to home. Thereafter, she never ventured beyond the gate, ever, and so on this day two years ago, we still don't know who, or what, lured her around and beyond it to put her in the path of a fast-moving vehicle. We never saw or heard a thing, only found her some minutes later. She was sufficiently tied to us in spirit by then to have managed to stagger back up the drive and inside the gate, where she simply lay down in the snow, a few drops of blood leaking out with her last breath. And when we found her, I howled at the sky, cursed all the likely suspects roundly, did my damnedest to make them pay. Because she was innocent, and a most beautiful spirit.

We have our own theories, our own suspicions, just as we do with the two who vanished just as mysteriously last June. This county is a hard place for small spirits, full of evils brought here from without, and every day visits new horrors upon them. So if you're reading this, yes, we know we will never be able to prove it . . . but we know.

But none of that brings this sweet girl back; nothing does And so this morning, at the appointed time, I did as we always do with our dogs and our horses who are no longer here, who gave us the greatest of gifts while they were with us and so we can do no less by them now. I took her her cedar and tobacco and a little fresh water, and while I was there, Sunny and Stormy came barreling up behind me to fling themselves both at me and at the resting place of the sister they never knew. 

Except I don't think she's quite a sister. We see so much of Coyote and Crow in both of these new pups, in appearance, yes, but mostly in spirit. There was an attachment there from the very beginning that neither of us, in all our years of dogs, has ever seen before, a sense of familiarity on their part, a very clear sense of finding home. We know that the other dogs come to visit us occasionally through them, but with Coyote and Crow, it's perhaps something a little more. And so in a sense, they are still with us, the honey-colored fierce bundle of love and her smaller but still-fiercer sister with the raven fur.

We love you, little Trickster Girl. You're always in our hearts.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.