[ Ed.: I can’t figure out how to get Sandvox to work with cropped Photos for OS X images, so I can’t zoom in on the figure in the center. ]
After having lunch off campus, I started driving back to work when I saw this “dog” in a front yard. We have coyotes in the area that sometimes make off with small pets. Ours is a Doberman, so there’s no real worry on that score. But there was something really weird about this. I think of coyotes as sort of like wolves or shepherd-type dogs in shape, but this looked kind of matted, gray, and ugly. I see now where the chupacabra myth comes from.
Was it some sick dog? Or a weird breed of dog? Looking closely, I can see no collar, so it isn’t owned by someone, likely. Is it a wild dog? Or a coyote-dog hybrid?
Eventually, though, after looking at many pictures of coyotes, I figured out that it’s a coyote with a very bad case of mange.