Out Foxed

I’m not sure what to do with various animal sightings over the last few weeks. I have written before about the coyote. This past weekend was a fox encounter…well an almost encounter. I was in Babler Park riding alone. I had the feeling when I mounted up that I would see a fox. And I was apprehensive about that since the last sightings of foxes in those woods had been when my father in law had just been felled with a stoke and then, weeks later, right before he died. The fox (or foxes) I saw then was a small grey vixen (and I wrote a poem about this experience). So, after about a half an hour riding, and thinking about seeing a fox, I saw a family on a parallel trail standing looking over the hill to an area I could not see. The man had a baby on his back in a pack. They looked like veteran hikers. When he saw me slow as I came near them, he told me there was a fox nearby and pointed. I thanked him and rode on. I really did not want to actually see the fox.

I had heretofore always enjoyed seeing foxes. Big red males used to parade outside my office window, sauntering up through the pasture. As development has taken place around us, they have all but disappeared. We did see one small dead female (I have a poem about this, too) before the ones at Babler. Recently, right before my mother in law went into the hospital and needed a pacemaker, our housekeeper told me she had seen a grey fox up near my stable.

So, I am wary about foxes. But overall, they seem benign, even helpful. See, for example,

http://www.linsdomain.com/totems/pages/fox.htm
http://www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/ecolodge/197/fox.html,
http://www.crystal-cure.com/fox.html, and
http://www.betterliving.co.nz/content/theFamily/new-age/Totem-Animal-Fox.aspx

I hope I will get some insight into what I’m experiencing and what’s going on.