Grey foxes. I’m sitting in my cabin up on the backside of Glass Factory Mountain. Years ago, when we first got this place—which is only a mile as the crow flies from Cole Hill where my Abenaki grandfather was born—we converted part what was a bedroom into a study. Bookshelves line three walls, aside from the desk where I have my computer, which is not connected to either a modem or a cable. No TV up here, no phone. Just me and my writing--and whatever entertainment is available of the non-digital, unbroadcast kind. Thinking of which, the fourth wall of my study is taken up by a wide-windowed back door and a bank of windows, a window bay from knee height to just below the ceiling. Looking out in the woods that come to within sixty feet of the door. I’m working on a new novel, but see something out of the corner of my left eye as I’m typing. And I hear the catbird whose nest and just-fledged little ones are in the mountain laurels that flank the other side of the cabin. That catbird’s mewling call is a warning, quite unlike the multiphonic symphony that issues from its voice box early every morning and every summer day at dusk. Was it a streak of grey, low to the ground that my mind keeps imaging after the actual sight has gone from my vision? I hit SAVE, lift my hands from the keyboard, and slowly swivel my chair. Just in time to see a small fox, its tail arced like a question mark, romp by. Romp being the appropriate word, not run or lope. It’s covering space as if the only purpose of its motion is to express its delight about being alive on a warm summer afternoon like this one. Was it a grey fox? It had to be. Its fluffy coat was grey along its side, its lower jaw and upper chest a rufous red, black markings on its face, white on its lower chest and belly. As cute and cuddly looking as a stuffed toy. It made me feel like hugging it—with my heart, not my hands. Keeping a respectful distance is one of the best ways we humans can relate to wild things. Being satisfied with just seeing is better than trying to own But I’m not seeing it now. It’s disappeared from sight. However, it was headed toward the front of the house where the catbird is now verging on hysteria. Which may mean that small fox is still hanging around. I get up, trusting that my motion can’t be seen from outside and walk into the living room to look out the picture window there. And there it is under one of my pear trees. I can see for sure that it is a grey fox--also and not a full-grown one. I know that because, just beyond it, lying next to the blueberry bushes and calming chowing down on a white-fleshed Anjou pear, holding it firmly between her paws, is a full grown fox that has to be the first one’s mother. Especially obvious by the way that first fox, three-fourths the size of his mom noses up to her, rolls onto his side, and paws at her nose. She finishes her pear, licks her little ones muzzle.Then she saunters into the woods and he follows her. But not far. I can see one ear poking up from the tall royal ferns, the green stems trembling as he moves among them. Patience is one of the best things to cultivate if you really want to see things. That’s one thing my Grampa taught me, though his exact words were more like “Just set still.” Which I do as I go back to my chair. And within a matter of minutes my patience pays, with dividends. Her afternoon snack complete, the mother fox trots up in the middle of the small, dry more or less lawn (more or less because I neither seed nor water it) just outside my study, flattens out on the ground and rolls onto her back, then onto her stomach. She seems both relaxed and alert as she starts to groom herself like a cat, her ears always cocked for any threat. She’s soon joined by that first cub—or maybe not. Its tail looks thinner, the tip blacker. Then “maybe not” becomes “for sure” as the original cub leaps out of the ligularias, drops down into the “let’s play” posture known to every member of the dog family, and the two cubs begin chasing each other in circles around the planter where the cherry tomatoes are still in yellow blossom. Leaping, turning in mid–air to pounce on each other, those two little foxes are better than a nature documentary. It’s been said by behavioral scientists that the intelligence of an animal relates to play behavior. Playing builds their muscles, sharpens their coordination, readies them for their role as near-apex predators. The smarter they are, the more they play. By which measure, my backyard visitors may rank as a bunch of furry little Einsteins. And also, I realize when I think about it, the reason why the chipmunk and squirrel population around my cabin, so large a mere month ago, has been markedly less evident of late. I watch the three grey foxes interact like that for another half an hour, thinking it can’t get any better than this –even though the catbird flitting in and out to perch discontentedly just outside the window clearly disagrees. But I’m wrong again. A third cub suddenly bursts from beneath the rhododendrons and joins them. More than an hour has passed and the show is still going on, punctuated by furry exits and curtain calls. My whole backyard and the nearby woods has transformed into a vulpine playground. Everything is zen to them, pure beginners mind. A single purple petal plucked from a flowering hosta becomes a game as the first cub tosses it up into the air, watches it flutter, chases it, catches it, tosses it again. The sticks I’ve placed to mark where pink Lady’s Slippers grow are perfect to chew. The ramp leading up to my storage shed is an excellent surface to wrestle upon and roll down. I’ve put away my novel, opened up a new file to write this. It’s now five o’clock in the afternoon and I suppose I need to think about other things that need to be done—including that grocery shopping if I want to eat today. But who needs food when you have what I’ve had for the last two hours? Still, there’s been no sign of any of them for a full ten minutes since the mother fox laid her ears back, got low to the ground, and vanished behind the big pines. The show may be over, folks. But wait. There at the edge of the woods, as if she materialized out of the air, is the mother fox. She’s nosing something I can barely see aside from its white belly. Then, with the greatest delicacy, she picks it up in her jaws. A rabbit she’s just caught. Trots off into the woods with its limp body toward those three young ones who are about to eat. I may have been ignoring my own need to eat, but not her and her cubs. Grey foxes.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 01:44:46 +0000
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