"The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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| Red fox 10-9-14 |
"She's a lean vixen: I can see
the ribs, the sly
trickster's eyes, filled with longing
and desperation, the skinny
feet, adept at lies."
-- Margaret Atwood,
"Red Fox," Morning In The Burned House
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| Red fox 10-9-14 |
"I think I have this thing where everybody has to to think I'm the greatest.
And if they aren't completely knocked out and dazzled and slightly intimidated by me,
I don't feel good about myself."
-- Roald Dahl, Fantastic Mr. Fox
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| Red fox 10-9-14 |
"Foxy, Foxy
You know you are a cute little heart breaker."
-- Jimi Hendrix, "Foxy Lady"
Sometimes it's good to be in the right place at the right time.
Yesterday the guy mowing my neighbor's lawn was standing at the edge of the grass taking a picture of something in my yard with his camera phone. Naturally, I looked around the corner of the house to see what the something was.
It was this spectacular red fox lolling around in the grass beside my garden.
Of course I grabbed my camera. But by the time I looked back out the window, the fox was gone and the guy was walking back toward the mower, slipping his phone into a hip pocket.
Being the stealthy vixen that I am, I sneaked out the front door. I figured there was only one direction the fox could have gone, and I figured right. I got out there just in time to see it trotting along the the fence between the houses.
The fox stayed close to the houses. And I stayed close to the fox.
I was in my socks, so I was a quiet stalker.
Eventually the fox stopped moving and settled down under some bushes.
So I got belly-down in the grass and played fox-arazzi.
The fox didn't seem frightened all all. It tolerated my picture-taking with unexpected patience. It got a little twitchy if I moved too quickly or army-crawled too close. But otherwise, it just seemed rather bored and un-bothered by the stupid human in the grass.
It stretched its lithe fox body.
It yawned its sharp pointy fox mouth.
It nibble-groomed its perfectly fluffy fox tail.
It laid down and watched me blithely, casually, with its mesmerizing amber fox eyes while I looked back through the big round google-eye of my camera lens.
And then it got up and trotted silently away on its little fox feet clad in black knee-high fox stockings.
It was a brief encounter, but a kind of magical one, watching this glorious specimen of fox perfection do its routine Tuesday morning fox business.
I'm usually not a big fan of unexpected visitors.
Unless the visitor is a total fox.
