Nature is a Mother

Both coyotes and wolves are social animals, and generally monogamous. Coyote pairs mate for life, and raise their pups together, so any groups you see are usually immediate family members. They sometimes form temporary hunting packs with unrelated coyotes, usually in the winter when food is scarce and they need to cooperate to bring down larger game. They breed once a year in late winter or early spring, and the old crop of pups will disperse before the new crop is born, so the current family group only consists of two generations.

The social structure of wolf packs are different. Their packs consist of an alpha male and an alpha female, and several generations of their pups, along with some outsiders that managed to work their way into the pecking order. Usually the alphas are the only ones breeding, but sometimes a subordinate pair may breed. All the wolves in the pack contribute to the effort of feeding the pups and, when food is scarce, the alpha pair's pups get fed first. The iconic lone wolf is usually a former alpha that has been overthrown and will not accept a subordinate position, or it may be the sole survivor of a pack that has been exterminated. The old alpha doesn't usually last very long, and the sole survivor will join another pack if he can find one that will accept him.

The reason that housecats bring home live prey is to teach their kittens how to hunt. Cats without kittens may be sharing their prey with you, dead or alive, to show how much they love you. Then again, they may be just fooling around with a predatory instinct, the true purpose of which has been lost somewhere in the ancestral gene pool.

Nature is not cruel, and Nature is not kind, at least not the way humans are. Nature is a pragmatic businesswoman, if something works it's good, if not it's just useless. One day, when I was visiting with my daughter as she peddled her wares at an arts and crafts show, it started raining really hard. Her goods were pretty weatherproof, but the guy in the next booth had some fragile stuff, so we went over and helped him get it all under cover. He complained that this was the third show in a row he had been rained out, and asked us why God hated him. Quoting Jesus, I said "God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike." My daughter, who is a practicing Pagan, replied "Yes, She certainly does, doesn't She!" The guy told us that he didn't know much about religion, but he always had thought that God was a male. I explained to him that, in many pre-Christian cultures, the principal deity was indeed female, and that the concept is still preserved in the way we talk about Mother Earth or Mother Nature. He said, "Well, I'm not sure that I know what you're talking about, but one thing's for sure, you've got the 'Mother' part right!"

I know you wanted to talk about the recent Fort Hood shooting, but I only heard a little bit about it on the news, and I'm not familiar with the details. As far as I know, it's just another random act of insanity like you said. Sure it would have helped if somebody besides the shooter had been armed, but, even on a military post, people don't commonly walk around with a loaded gun unless they have a specific reason to do so. Sure it could have been prevented if the shooter had been unable to obtain guns and ammo, but the vast majority of gun owners never do anything like that in their lifetimes, so why should they be punished for the actions a few crazy people?