A few springs ago I was photographing fox at a den underneath an old deer-hunting cabin in Central Iowa. I had my back against another building to hide my silhouette, and 1 was covered with a camouflaged netting. I had been photographing the pups, when they suddenly scampered under the cabin. I saw motion in nearby trees and assumed one of the adult foxes had returned to the den with food for the pups. In zooming in on the motion, I was startled to sees a coyote looking for its own meal. It wasn’t until I got home and I enlarged and viewed the images on a monitor, that I noticed the intense look of the coyote’s eyes. Coyote is a key figure in Navajo mythology, and of all the figures in Navajo mythology, Coyote (Maii’) is the most contradictory. He is a shadowy figure that can be funny or fearsome. Coyote is greedy, vain, foolish, cunning and also occasionally displays a degree of power. From looking at this coyote’s eyes, I can see why the mystical references came to be. If you look closely, you can see the teats on this coyote. She was probably looking for a fox to feed to her young pups. 1/160 sec., f/8, 600mm, ISO 720, Nikon D7200, Manfrotto tripod with a Gimbal-style head.
