The summer had not yet settled in, leaving the nights bitterly cold and the days, extensively mild. We had just moved into our new trailer house, our belongings would be there the next day along with the U-Haul truck transporting them driving through the night.

Although the night was fairly peaceful, other than an occasional car passing by on the road just feet from my house, with no blankets, heaters, or even beds, it was also quite miserable. We had been enjoying the silence until we heard the merciless howling and yelping of the mangy coyote right along our walls. Sitting there, severely regretting the decision to come with my mom and sister, I started to think. Was there some way to make it go?

At about 1 AM, I finally got annoyed with my mom and sisters constant sobbing and screaming every time the lone coyote howled. I stood up off of that worn down carpet, and walked down our long, dark hallway until I reached the back door. I opened the door slowly and peered through the doorjamb at the coyote, careful not to make a sound. The seemingly starving coyote was standing by my living room window, still howling and yelping as if it was in agonizing pain. I backed out of the doorway, again careful not to make a sound, and slammed the door as hard as I could; the sound produced was a loud bang that made the coyote run away in fright.

About an hour later, I woke up to the sound of more ostensibly endless howling. Once again, I stood up, and went to the backdoor, half asleep, I slammed the door again, but this time it didn’t work. I tried it once more, but again, nothing. I persistently tried over and over until I finally grew tired of it. I walked back to my living room, sat down, and started to think. This time I would have to think of one that would positively work, one that would scare the persistent coyote away forever.

I began to think. At first, it seemed like I would never think of another plan, in fact, now, I still don’t know how this plan came to my mind. This is when I realized we had brought dry ice with us to keep some food that required refrigeration, cold. I grabbed a water bottle that was about half-full, dropped some dry ice through the mouth piece, and tightened the lid as hard as I could. As I started my journey to the backdoor, I could feel the bottle slowly swelling up from the gas produced by the dry ice mixing with the water.

I opened the back door, the bottle still swelling in my hands, stepped out, and threw the bottle as hard as I could, straight at the confused coyote’s awkward frame. As it tumbled through the air, it seemed like slow motion, I saw the coyote’s insignificant attention drift from the house to the bottle. As the coyote slowly turned his surprisingly small face towards the bottle coming directly towards him, it hit him squarely in the side of the face. Being a third grader, it seemed pretty funny and I could not help but laugh. The coyote was quite startled with the impact and recoiled. The bottle continued to swell, and finally, violently exploded as the coyote bent down to sniff it. Momentarily stunned, the coyote walked away as if he had been drinking alcohol for the whole night. With a sigh of relief, I walked sleepily back inside and fell quickly asleep.

The next day when my dad arrived at our new house, I told him about my frightening encounter the night before. I will never forget that terrifying night.