Gray fox!!
Listen says fox it is music to run
over the hills to lick
dew from the leaves to nose along
the edges of the ponds to smell the fat
ducks in their bright feathers by
far out, safe in their rafts of
sleep. It is like
music to visit the orchard, to find
the vole sucking the sweet of the apple, or the
rabbit with his fast-beating heart. Death itself
is a music. Nobody has ever come close to
writing it down, awake or in a dream. It cannot
be told. It is flesh and bones
changing shape and with good cause, mercy
is a little child beside such an invention. It is
music to wander the black back roads
outside of town no one awake or wondering
if anything miraculous is ever going to
happen, totally dumb to the fact of every
moment’s miracle. Don’t think I haven’t
peeked into windows. I see you in all your seasons
making love, arguing, talking about God
as if he were an idea instead of the grass,
instead of the stars, the rabbit caught
in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought
home to the den. What I am, and I know it, is
responsible, joyful, thankful. I would not
give my life for a thousand of yours.
~ Mary Oliver
“Straight Talk from Fox”
In my last post I told you I suspected that I might be on the trail of a gray fox, a nocturnal animal that I had never seen before. I still don’t know whether or not that was true, but it turns out I encountered a gray fox anyway!
Funny story…someone posted a cell phone snap of a gray fox in a group I follow on Facebook. I commented that I badly wanted to photograph a gray fox, and she responded that two gray foxes visit her backyard every night and that I was welcome to come see them. We exchanged several private messages and eventually ended up talking by phone. She’s an 80-year-old former nurse who has spent her life adventuring outdoors among wild things in wild places, and she didn’t find it at all odd that I was willing to drive an hour to a stranger’s house to see a gray fox. Like recognizes like, I suppose. We discussed the current pandemic and decided that as long as we stayed outdoors and kept our distance from one another it should be ok.
Two days later, I pulled up in her driveway. Her backyard is a little paradise…on the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, several seed feeders for birds, a couple of hummingbird feeders, a bluebird box, and she’s raising box turtles (with a lid over their enclosure so the raccoons don’t get them.) She said the foxes usually show up between 7:00 and 8:00, so we sat down to wait and had a delightful conversation in the meantime.
After two false starts that turned out to be a raccoon and a cat, respectively, I eventually looked up to see two bright brown eyes staring back at me from a far corner of the yard.
She looks a bit raggedy because she’s shedding her winter coat, but I think she’s still beautiful. (Side note: It has long been believed that foxes molt twice a year, but there is more recent evidence that suggests they molt only once…basically all summer.)
It was difficult to photograph her because, unlike red foxes, gray foxes are truly nocturnal, and this one didn’t make an appearance until dusk…but I was able to capture my favorite moment.
Look at that earnest little face! Now look above her shoulder to the left…
At first I thought the raccoon would slink around the edge of the yard and avoid the fox entirely, but instead it crept slowly toward her. I don’t know what had captured her attention off in the distance, but she didn’t appear to have any idea that somebody bigger than her was sneaking up behind her. Still, I expected she would hear the racoon at any moment.
I don’t know if gray foxes don’t have the same phenomenal hearing that red foxes do or if this fox was just distracted, but either way, I was wrong. She absolutely did not hear that raccoon coming.
At the last moment the fox turned her head toward the raccoon, and it was almost as if she swore out loud. And my next photo looked like this:
They both bolted in opposite directions, but I can assure you the fox moved faster than that raccoon! Poor thing…but I can’t pretend it wasn’t a little bit funny!
I wish I had been able to wait and see if she might come back, but it was nearly twilight, and there just wasn’t enough light left in the day. Still, all told it was the nicest evening I’ve had in quite a while.
