Who would’ve thought that a girl from San Fransisco would find herself living in a log cabin with an orphaned coyote pup?
Her name is Shreve Stockton.
She planned on riding her Vespa from San Francisco to New York, but became mesmerized with Wyoming… Shreve let go of her old life completely and fell in love with a rancher. On his property, they built a log cabin and she became a ranch hand. One day, he brought home an orphaned baby coyote whose mother had been shot.
She named him Charlie.
The Daily Coyote is the book Shreve Stockton wrote, sharing everything she learned from having a wild coyote as a “pet”. She talks about the many obstacles and glories she faced as a result of raising this coyote out of her tiny log cabin!
What an inspiration. I loved this book so much that I finished it in, at most, two days.
When you read it, the many details and beautiful, vivid descriptions of Shreve’s daily life, and coyote, draws you in with wonder and an “I wanna live like that!” optimistic attitude. Her new, very secluded lifestyle had huge benefits and caused her relationship with the nature and animals around her to flourish – eliminating the distractions that her former city life held. It gave her a chance to really pay attention to small details, listen, and observe.
After not too long, Shreve photographed Charlie daily and began emailing the photos to her friends back home. Hence, the “Daily Coyote”. This became amazingly popular, and she began taking subscriptions, making a website… writing a book!
You follow these two as their relationship becomes richer by the day and witness that, as Charlie grew older, his true, wild-animal side came out to play. He began to nip and bite at Shreve and others, and his behavior became generally more unreliable and dangerous. Shreve wanted to make it work!
The Daily Coyote is all about how she went about gaining relationship and respect from this wild, maturing coyote.
They weren’t the only ones living in the log cabin: Charlie and Shreve shared the cabin with a cat and a dog!
Charlie loved the cat…
But Charlie also romped around with the his dog-friend for hours!
Actually, they really all just hung out together all the time…
I recommend this book to anyone and everyone. It’s a masterpiece with gorgeous, high-quality photos displayed every few pages.
Check out her website here!
Enjoy!