Out here, in the shadow of Horse Ridge, furtaking harvesting of predatory furbearers means you can trap, pursue and hunt coyotes with no closed harvest season, bag limit, or weapons restriction. But you’re not supposed to drive your big truck out here over the delicate bunch grasses under the cover of night, and chainsaw tree trunks to make stump seats for them. We bring them occasional tennis balls during the day as peace offerings, and whisper warnings into their dens, “look out for the furtakers, they’re not your friends.”

It’s legal to trap bobcats and foxes, or shoot them with guns. There are special scopes for night hunting and machines to make sad rabbit calls, to lure the furbearers out of their caves. The list of who’s a fur bearer is extensive, the list of who’s a furtaker is short.

These are the unexpected moments, learning that where you just walked the dogs may involve set traps to kill or maim a furbearer. Or when a quiet weekday morning’s puncuated by the sound of weaponry. Or you go into Ace hardware to buy some glue and you can study the different bullets and handguns available on the gun aisle, or a Sunday morning at the gas station and why the heck are there so many massive diesel one tons with massive flatbed trailers lined up in the slush?

It’s just different. A different vibe than old guys on one wheel skateboards, riding creaky old cruisers with long boards under their arms. Than the westside ladies with the felt hats and cool pants buying massive crates of organic vegies and drinking expensive coffee on the whole wheat sourdough bakery patio. Than the chainsaw heroes from the mountains coming down to cut you out of your driveway, than the endless wood fired pizzas that you sit in the endless traffic to go pick up.

A different life altogether, that can’t have been predicted when just wanting some peace and quiet and a little patch of land.