“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, quizzically. “Yes, you! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He oozed over behind a small mound of dirt and resumed his obnoxious, loud-mouthed complaining.

“I can still see you,” I said, and he froze again, a perfect picture of schizy antagonism and curiosity.

Coyotes aren’t used to being spoken to. Manners aren’t their strong suit. But maybe they think the same of us.

I’m accustomed to glimpsing coyotes in quick sideways or rear-end profiles, dashing across the highway and vanishing into blackberry thickets, focused and intent as if they are delivering a crucial message to the queen from a general on a distant battlefield.

You can roughly gauge a species’ intelligence by counting corpses in the road in the morning. Around here, this suggests opossums are the dumbest, followed by porcupines, deer, feral cats, raccoons and the odd beaver. Ever seen a run-over coyote? Neither have I. Judging by city TV news items, even humans must have a lower roadkill-IQ than coyotes. We’re constantly finding innovative techniques to get ourselves backed over in the driveway.

Even taking their sharp wits into account, it was surprising to find one standing up on its hind feet haranguing me on Tuesday as I walked the dogs down our favorite forest path between home and the ocean. Although we’re habituated to discreetly steering clear of the sleuth of bears that inhabit our hills and garbage containers, packs of coyotes are a new and unnerving phenomenon.

A few days earlier, I observed four coyotes dashing along behind one of our neighbor’s goofy boxer dogs like greyhounds in hot pursuit of a mechanical bunny. They broke off the chase when they caught wind of me, but I suspect the boxer still has its tail between its legs. Keeping it at home instead of wandering around unsupervised in the woods would be a good option.

My talkative coyote, which probably has plenty of bite to accompany its bark, might be protecting newborn spring pups, or it might simply be bored and emboldened by the savage Battle of the Boxers. It really was standing up, at least for a few moments at a time, and barking at us, all big ears and bluster. Out in the open, it stayed a good 50 feet away, but in the deep woods, I could tell it was much closer and began to fear for my dogs’ safety.

Back in the Rocky Mountains, where I grew up, we all smiled with pained forbearance when sheepmen launched into another arm-waving tantrum about the varmints killing innocent livestock. (By the way, every true Westerner pronounces it Ky-oat, not ky-oatie.) This led to the mocking bumper sticker, “Eat lamb: 10,000 coyotes can’t be wrong!” which eventually proved so popular that the industry adopted it as an advertising slogan. Maybe, though, they weren’t completely crazy after all.

Here on the Long Beach Peninsula, recent complaints about aggressive coyotes led to an information session in April by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. You can roughly gauge a species’ intelligence by counting corpses in the road in the morning.The gist of it was that “Yep, we sure have a mess of them,” and “Nope, there’s not much anybody can do about it.” In an interesting side note, the officers said a lot of local cat and small dog disappearances actually can be pinned on eagles, not coyotes.

My mother suggested I start carrying a shotgun on my walks. In the old days, I would have. Beside intimidating any overly frisky coyotes, every so often a grouse takes flight in the underbrush, always making me jump and think of how best to fix her for dinner. But somehow I suspect any tourists encountering a shotgun-toting local accompanied by his mangy curs on the Discovery Trail would speed-dial 9-1-1 on their cell phones. I don’t want to end up in my own police dispatch report.

In his online “Living With Wildlife” series, the always sensible expert Russell Link advises carrying a starter pistol to scare them off – coyotes, I mean, not tourists, though I suppose it would work for them, too. See all his wisdom on the subject at wdfw.wa.gov/wlm/living/coyotes.htm

Finally, it always bears remembering that coyotes have been here a lot longer than most of us. Chinook Indian legends tell of learning all the do’s and don’ts of salmon fishing from Coyote, who learned them by questioning his own articulate excrement. This is a species that can use some lessons in couth, but outsmarts us in every other way.

– M.S.W.

Matt Winters is editor of the Chinook Observer.