It is night. I am lying on my Tempur-Pedic bed. My wife, Debra—who is a hateful and nasty person—is asleep next to me. I am supposed to be asleep, but I am not.

I’m a light sleeper. I have kids. Kids like to break stuff when they are young. When they get older, they start pulling on their genitals. They are learning about their bodies, and I think it’s terrible. We never did that when I was a kid. We played team-based sports. A group of guys coming together three nights a week to achieve a common goal—that’s living. Kids today, they sit on their gaming chairs in a damp room and pull their wieners to something they saw on the internet. To them, that’s an evening. Whatever. Either way, they are making noise, and being a dad means you have to get up and bang on doors until the noises stop. Last time I had a REM cycle was season four of Friends. That show would come on, and I’d blackout. Full-blown coma. I love Friends. Great show. Everybody likes to say they are one of the characters. I’m none of them. They’re awful people.

No. This night I can’t sleep because there are noises outside my window. What exactly? I don’t know. My blinds are closed, and, you know, I try not to mess with the blinds on my window because I don’t know how to close them once I open them. My wife does. The last thing I want to do is allow my wife to help me with something. Then what? I have to say thank you? Get the fuck out of here.

I bite the bullet and open the blinds. I look down at my backyard. It's one rabbit and one coyote, about four feet away from my French drain. French drains are underground, but I know where the French drain is because I installed the French drain. My wife wanted some Israeli landscaper to install the French drain. Ok. Yeah. I’m just going to let some 6’4 tan guy with an exotic accent do manual labor in my backyard in front of my wife and two sons. Sure. What’s next? Christmas is canceled and we do Hannukah at his house because he’s my dad and is married to my wife and my sons are now my brothers? No. I installed the French drain. Terrible couple days. I ended up doing it wrong and the Israeli guy had to come out and fix it, but he said I was close.

But the rabbit and coyote: they're going back and forth with each other. Nothing physical. It’s more like a heated conversation. I tell them to shut up. They look up at me, and they give me a look like, "Okay, we'll take it easy," but I know they're lying. I don’t care if it’s two different, non-human species. I know the mannerisms of two people who want to continue arguing.

I close the blinds and try to get a good hamstring stretch in, but yeah, sure enough, they're screaming again. I open the window this time so the rabbit and coyote can hear me real good. My wife is like, "Greg, go back to bed. Don't engage with animals. They can't understand you, and you can't understand them." I'm like, "You haven't talked to me in four days, and this is what you say to me? Put your goddamn sleep mask back on and roll over."

I scream at these two knuckleheads, “Either do it or don’t!” I recently got my son to YouTube me some clips from The Wire. There is a guy—black guy—Marlo, who said this on the show. He was referring to his friend murdering, or not murdering, a crackhead who scratched his car. In the case of the rabbit and coyote, I don’t know what “it” is. I just wanted them to shut up. I’ve only watched clips of The Wire—full show is too confusing (it’s no NCIS: New Orleans)—but I would definitely be Marlo.

The coyote looks confused. The rabbit is not confused at all. The rabbit is aware that it is go time. He nods at me, then goes at the coyote. The coyote was not prepared for this direct action. Some people are just talkers. It seems like the coyote is a talker. Gun to my head, I would say that I am also a talker. I would never admit this in public, but any type of confrontation—healthy or not—is a real fear of mine. I also can’t take criticism. But with all that said, I would definitely consider myself a tough guy you should not mess with.  

But yeah, the rabbit gets its paws on the coyote. The coyote can’t really get a good defense up, and the rabbit manages to work its paws inside the coyote’s mouth. So he’s got the coyote’s jaws in each paw. The rabbit lifts the coyote over his head. This is an insane amount of core strength, and it clearly is testing the rabbit’s core. The rabbit is breathing hard. Undisciplined breathing. I want to tell the rabbit that breath control will add reps but people get weird about workout advice. But, okay, the rabbit has the coyote up over his head by its jaws. Then—I shit you not—he tears the coyote in half. Huge mess. Blood all over my back patio. My wife has all these goddamn wind chimes she blew up our credit cards for, and those are covered in blood. Not going to get a good chime anymore. There you go again, Debra.

The rabbit is soaked. He’s all fired up on his murder. As he should be. His actions have fucked up my night, but if I’m over here criticizing his performance, then I’ve got a real brain or attitude problem. The rabbit paces around for a bit to catch its breath. The rabbit stops moving. Its little rabbit chest slows its heaving down.

The rabbit looks up at me. He stares at me. He raises his paw and points a little paw finger at me. I look at him like, “So what?” My sprinklers go off. The rabbit runs away. Gone.

I head downstairs because I have to deal with this shit before morning. I am almost sure it would not be good for my kids to see a gruesomely murdered coyote. But I don't know. My youngest son Ethan is nine. He's soft. He spends all weekend blowing bubbles and picking flowers for his mother. I think a dead body would be good for him to see, but not this one. This one is a little much. It’s insane. This dead body is insane. Too insane. The dead body he needs to see is one he can get a paragraph out of in a college essay. The right dead body makes a reach school a target school. Don’t get mad. It’s true. You can’t get mad if it’s true.

My older son, Danny, is sixteen. He's on his computer beating his dick and making his room smell like a salami factory. His whole room is beyond damp. It is moist. I have no concept of what he likes or dislikes. I know he loves masturbating. The young man likes to beat his dick. Sometimes I’ll take him to the mall and point at things to gauge his reaction to whatever I pointed at. I’ll point at people his age and ask if they are his friends. Nothing. I’ll point at a store and ask if it is in his top ten of favorite stores. Nothing. A part of me wants to leave the coyote, wake Danny up, and show it to him. I want to watch him experience something. Then I can ask him, "Hey, this murdered animal: is this good or bad?" If he says "good," ok. That's an issue. If he says "bad," great: my son is a regular guy.

If he says, “I don’t know” or “I don’t care,” it will crush me.

I decide to clean up the coyote. I grab four paper towels and a trash bag and I do my best. I know I have Windex, but I can’t find it, so I do a dry rub. I go up the stairs and back to my bedroom. I crawl under the covers and fart on my ungrateful wife. I fall asleep.