WHAT’S SO FUNNY:A wild pitch hits

Our backyard is split in half. The half near the house is flat. Then there’s a 5-foot-high cement wall with a picket fence on top, and the farther half is covered with ice plant and slopes up toward the moon.

Last year, a coyote took to visiting this slope at night. We caught only a glimpse of him at first. We weren’t even sure what he was, except that he was fast and big.

In August, one of our three indoor cats, Topaz — a beautiful Siamese who was always cautious unless tempted by a rodent — got out and ventured up into the ice plant one evening without our knowledge. Now we have two cats.

My wife Patti Jo and our Welsh springer spaniel Booker saw the coyote one day when I wasn’t around, and they both barked at him, but he was above them, with a straight shot across several backyards, all the way out to the next street. He could afford to laugh, and he did.

The word I got was that he wasn’t your scraggly, skinny type and could make short work of all our animals if he got the opportunity.

Then the other night I let Booker out the side door, and he took off around back so fast that it was clear we had a guest.

Booker is overqualified to be with us, really. A stranger once asked Patti Jo, “What are you doin’ with a top-of-the-line bird dog?”

Although we saw no movement in the ice plant, we knew the coyote was around because Booker said so.

I shone a high-powered flashlight up through the bushes. I also picked up a baseball. Patti Jo was out back by then.

And there he was in the flashlight beam, built like a giant German shepherd, moving along the top of the ice plant, behind the bushes.

Patti Jo yelled, “Go away! Go away!” but he’d heard that before.

I threw the baseball as he got to a gap in the bushes. The flashlight went down with my follow-through so I couldn’t see it fly, but I heard it hit, a kind of ribby thump. The coyote didn’t say anything, but he took off at a much higher rate of speed, and we haven’t seen him since.

Hitting a moving coyote with a baseball through thick brush at night on uneven ground --- well, I’m not saying I could do it again, I’m just saying I did it once.

My only regret is that I don’t throw very hard. When I was a kid pitcher in Missouri, the oppo- sition called me “Weed-Arm.” I’m sure I didn’t hurt him much.

If you think me inhumane, I would reply that this was almost certainly the guy who ate a member of our family and wouldn’t mind eating a couple more. That throw was for Topaz.

Coyotes will be coyotes, of course, and he’s just following his bliss. We’re just hoping he’ll alter his route and take the road less ouchy from now on.