First, read this: https://some.ly/8uejTBn

Now that you’re back, I have to say how much I wish my grandparents had been able to text, because shit like this would have been epically documented for the rest of us to enjoy. My grandfather actually did this. And by this, I mean that he brought home a coyote to his house in the middle of south side Chicago and kept it as a pet. Until the neighbors told him that that was seriously uncool and made him put it down. Then he taxidermied it himself and put it in the basement where it began to slowly fall apart over the coming years. Apparently, there are pictures somewhere of my mom “riding” it when she was a little kid. But what’s even more amazing is that my grandmother let him. We’re talking about a Germanic woman who was not into nonsense or frivolity (which is surprising given that she had fairy ears – I’m not kidding. They came to little points at the top). If he laughed while eating and started to choke on his food and go into a coughing fit (which happened at pretty much every meal), she would reprimand him and say, “That’s what you get for making jokes at the breakfast table.” Gram did not play, y’all. So how did he talk her into letting him keep a pet coyote?! And then how did he talk her into allowing him to taxidermy an animal in the basement? Gram liked a clean house. Animal gut does not a clean house make. Nor does a rotting taxidermied animal. These are but two of hundreds of questions I wish I had asked my grandparents before they died.