Coyotes only prey upon cats when development has spoiled their natural habitat and forced them to go elsewhere for food. Coyotes in their natural environment hunt an incredibly wide territory. They kill things like mice and kangaroo rats. On occasion they will kill baby goats or sheep if they fall behind the herd and their mothers are not protective. Sometimes they will even bring down grown sheep. I think this is partly because sheep are incredibly stupid animals and partly because the smell of sheep seems to excite almost any canine. As far as I know, they don't bring down adult deer or cattle.

Coyotes are total pack animals and rarely hunt alone. The reason coyotes in their natural environment rarely kill cats is that they are human shy. When cats abide by humans, coyotes won't go near them. In the 10 years that I lived in the heart of Texas, prime coyote country, I never knew them to kill cats. They did not even invade the hen house and chickens are easy pickings. We never lost chickens to coyotes, but we lost them to coons and skunks and possums and hawks. The most brutal and efficient predators on the ranch were skunks. They will kill what they will never be able to carry off for the sheer, frenzied pleasure of it. Coons are tough but they seem to like to stay near natural water.

(Any cat that will fight a coon is one tough kitty!)

At night, I could hear the coyotes in the distance hunting, a lovely sound despite the fact that it portended some poor creature's death.

If you live in an urban or suburban area and you see or hear coyotes near, then yes, they will kill cats. They do it because they are not really behaving naturally. They have become bold and lost their natural fear of human habitats. However, I suspect that some cat killings that are blamed on coyotes are caused by pack dogs. Stray dog packs or even dogs that pack together when their owners let them run can be incredibly dangerous -- and not just to cats!

If she was a Supreme Court judge, isn't DA a sort of demotion?

No kidding. He was married to a friend of mine. Once, when my then husband and I and this couple were about to go into a restaurant to dinner, this guy told this story about how he participated in a gang rape. To hear him tell it, he was in his late teens and with a group of guys and this woman agreed to have sex with the bunch of them. She was drunk. They were also drinking. His story was that she had sex with the first three guys and then changed her mind before it was his turn. He was mad that she changed her mind and at that point he raped her. The other guys held her down.

Needless to say, we were all speechless. He said, "Don't look so shocked. What does it matter? She was just a whore."

I tried to maintain my friendship with my friend without having to be around her husband. Later, she confided in me that one night, when she had begged off sex, he had raped her.

When I moved a somewhat further distance away, I eased out to the friendship.

The conservative candidate will look to her base when it comes to reelection. She will ask herself, who is more important to please, the college and people who like sports or this 17 year old who wondered into a party where she didn't belong and got drunk.

This is really a no brainer. She's going to please the conservatives whose mind set is still -- I promise you -- "girls who get drunk and parties and then pass out deserve what they get."

Conservatives are only tough on certain kinds of crime.

Almost nothing can make a DA take a case to trial if he/she does not want to prosecute. This is because, ultimately, everyone in the system understands that the DA must stand on his/her record of convictions. If she feels she can't get one or that it will cost her politically, she won't go there.

You have mentioned the wedge they need to proceed with an investigation -- the underage drinking and statutory rape. If they wanted to use this to open up the investigation, surely they would.

I'll bet anything we are looking at a significant difference in social status between the potential accused and the victim.