The Confessions of Ira Short

At first glance, it looked like the coyote was taking a nap on the side of the road. He was slightly curled up, his head turned to look down the long straightaway. He looked healthy in his winter coat, with a ruff of heavy fur around his neck. Nearly all of my commute is on the outskirts of the towns I pass by, the borderlands between the islands of houses and stores and the open desert in between. The mountains, San Gorgonio on the north and San Jacinto on the south, act as impenetrable walls to the spread of the city. Even these open spaces are populated, with creatures you don't normally see from a car on the highway. Animals that live in the desert, or that have been lost there, or abandoned. But you do see them when their paths have intersected with ours on the highway. There are fresh kills every morning. As I pass the coyote, a puff of air ruffles the thick hair on the muscular neck. I follow the direction he was looking, where the granite bulk of San Jacinto fills t

As soon as traffic starts to back up on the freeway, there is always someone who will decide to drive down the shoulder as a shortcut to the next exit. The morning commute has slowed to a crawl. The freeway narrows to three lanes; we're moving, but slowly. I'm in the center lane, pacing the semi in front of me at a steady 20 miles an hour. To my right, coming up the paved shoulder, is a small flock of medium-sized birds. Uniformly white, there's about a dozen of them, flying in a loose formation no more than eight feet above the pavement. Steadily, they pass the slowly moving cars, keeping to their straight path along the empty shoulder. They got off at the next exit.