Mike v. Pack of Coyotes

Over the past two weeks or so I've been suffering from writer's block when it comes to sports. Even though it's an exciting time for sports in Detroit, with the Pistons in the playoffs, the Red Wings two wins away from another Stanley Cup Final and the Tigers sitting atop the Central Division with one of the best records in baseball, I've been having a hard time coming up with topics to write about and different angles to approach these topics. Nothing I write seems to make sense theoretically or grammatically and I've digressed from the main theme of this site more times in the past month than I would care to do so over the course of a whole year. For example I have wrote and re-wrote this opening paragraph about six times over the past 45 minutes and I'm still not satisfied with it. Seriously, you could force a chimpanzee to smoke copious amounts of crystal meth while staying awake for five days, chain him to a typewriter in a pitch black room filled with strobe lights and shooting flames while "Seasons in the Abyss" by Slayer was blared at a volume that would makes his ears bleed and the primate would still be able to manufacture more coherent, intelligent and humorous posts than I am capable of producing right now.

Now that I've set the bar impossibly high with that introductory paragraph, I'm going to once again digress from sports and write about a game my old roommate Mike and I used to play, (wait that last sentence sounded kind of gay, the game I'm talking about is strictly a hypothetical game, and not the game involving actual gay se......wait why am I even telling you guys this, you didn't even raise a question, let's just move along) that involved watching Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel until the sun came up and whenever a new animal was shown or discussed, I would ask Mike under what circumstances he could successfully vanquish the animal in a hand to hand battle. We would usually argue about this for an inordinate amount of time until things devolved into a half hour long wrestling match that left the two of us to exhausted to attend any of our classes that day. I truly believe that if Mike and I had spent as much time studying as we did playing Nintendo and arguing about stupid shit like this we would have graduated in three semesters with perfect GPA's, but I digress.

I know I've mentioned Mike a few times on this site before, whether it be for the repeated beatdowns I laid on him in games of Tecmo Super Bowl or his frightening similarity in appearance to Mike Maroth, but I don't think I've given him a great deal of context outside of mentioning a few isolated events and random aesthetic characteristics. I've been friends with Mike ever since he invited me to go see Ghostbusters II in first grade and even though that movie sucked assholes we've remained friends for the past 18 years. Mike has the personality of one of those guys who is ultra-competitive, quietly arrogant, and has a completely unjustified sense of self worth. However, his competiveness can be his downfall as whenever he would begin to annoy my friends or me and we wanted to distract him for 20 minutes or longer, we could just point to some impossibly heavy object, (i.e. a large rock or a refrigerator), and challenge him by saying something like this:

Me: "I was talking to Megan (the girl who lived next store) and we both agreed that you wouldn't be able to lift that stove sitting outside off the ground. Mostly because your arms are so tiny. I mean Megan was just saying about how when we first moved in she thought that you were my six year old little brother or a really ugly prepubescent girl or something."

Mike: (peering out the window) "You mean that stove next to the dumpster that the opossum's and badgers fight over? (Turning to look at me) I could lift that easily. I could probably lift it over my head or juggle them if there were more than one."

Me: "You are crazy, that thing probably weighs about 150 pounds. I bet you couldn't even lift one corner off the pavement."

After this Mike would usually leave the room and I would have 30 undisturbed minutes in the apartment to relax, maybe play a game of All-Star Baseball, or get a little homework done before I would hear him yelling out, "Hey, Andy!!!", and I would walk over to the window and see him next to the dumpster holding the stove off the ground as muddy leaves and voles came pouring out the back.

Enough context though, to research this post I grudgingly called Mike and set up this first hypothetical battle. However before we get to the analysis let's take a look at the combatants.

Mike (I don't have a photo of Mike on my computer so I had to borrow one of Mike Maroth as explained earlier): Age: 23, Height: 5'8", Weight: 150lbs, Top Running Speed: 20mph. Diet: Taco Bell, Sardines, Chunky Bars, Marijuana, Ruby Red Squirt. Favorite Movie: "The Chronicles of Riddick" (ugh). Favorite Musicians: Eminem, Seal. Little Known Fact: Broke his arm in second grade after falling down while trying to balance on a soccer ball, Mike is also the only person I know who has defeated the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game without the aid of Game Genie.

Pack of Coyotes: Total in Pack: 9. Height 2 ft. tall. Weight: 30 lbs. Top Running Speed: 43mph. Diet: rabbits, mice, shrews, fish, fawns. Favorite Movie: Bull Durham. Favorite Musicians: Anything produced by The Neptunes. Little Known Fact: COYOTE is the acronym for an American sex worker activist organization founded in 1973.

Mike's Analysis: "The top running speed is irrelevant because I wouldn't be racing them, that would only incite them to attack me, kind of like they were running down prey. No, I would stand there and let them encircle me, sort of like a ninja going into battle outnumbered. Coyotes are pretty small so I know I could take them one on one and hopefully a single coyote would be feeling brave enough to come at me allowing me to neutralize it and use the carcass as a weapon against the next attacking coyote. After the demise of the second attacking coyote I would imagine the remaining coyotes would huddle up and try to devise a more effective attack. This timeout would allow me to use the two deceased coyotes hides to make a coyote skin and infiltrate the huddle. By the time the coyotes realized what was happening I would have put down 3 more, leaving me with just 4 left to execute. Amid the ensuing confusion the surviving coyotes would scramble in a panic and (while still wearing the coyote skin) I would hunt them methodically until only one was left. I would imagine the final one would beg for his life and I would show mercy, bring him home and raise him as my own."

Andy's Final Prediction: I'm not sure if Mike could kill nine coyotes, that seems like an awfully high number for a carnivorous animal that relies on killing it's prey to survive. However I think I picked a pretty weak animal for Mike's first opponent, (I should have sprinkeld in a few timberwolves) as there has been only one coyote related fatality recorded in recent U.S. history. I don't think Mike would be able to eliminate the coyotes in the fashion he outlined above, but I think he could effectively neutralize them in some way. My final estimate is that Mike would have a 95% chance of surviving the attack outlined above.

I promise this is the last non-sports related post for a while...