In Aesop’s Fable called “The Fox and the Grapes,” a fox was walking across a bridge with a bunch of grapes in his mouth. He saw the image of himself in water and (being in ignorance of the principles of physics) opened his mouth to grab the other bunch of grapes. Oh well, thought the fox to himself, the grapes were probably sour anyway.

A coywolf is a hybrid canine descended from coyotes and grey wolves. According to TV news and other gossip, they inhabit the fields and streams around Mt Lebanon and everyplace else in the Northeast. They are exceptionally adaptable and clandestine as a coven of spies. Although they are known to observe human activity with interest, they are quite shy and people rarely observed them, even when the animals are living very close to our homes. According to a recent PBS broadcast in its “Nature” series, it used to be thought that these beasts live in exclusively in the deep woods and are rare in urban/suburban locations. But lately, scientists have been collar-tagging coywolves with radio transmitters and following them at night with infrared cameras. Based upon these studies, it is estimated that there are approximately 2,000 of them in Chicago and its suburbs alone.

In one film clip used by Nature, an adult coywolf was crossing a suburban street with a nice large egg in its mouth. According to Nature, the egg had probably been liberated from a nearby Canadian Goose nest. An excellent meal.

But wait. What’s this? A motor vehicle had flattened a squirrel! Without missing a beat, the Coywolf laid down the egg and picked up the roadkill squirrel, trotting away to its lair. Left behind, in the middle of the road, was the undamaged egg.

MORAL: Cunning is not the equivalent of smart.