The evening was typical late winter in my household. I lounged on my sofa, Magoo, the pug nestled at my side. My husband rested on his sofa, sharing his space with long-legged Abby, our loveable but flatulent lab/mix.
We were engrossed in the History Channel series, The Vikings. King Ragnar’s son strode across a frozen lake, wind and snow whipping lashing his hair. A large grizzly bear stalked him, slowly moving forward. Wolves howled in the distance.
The wolves howled and kept howling.
But was it wolves or a pack of coyotes?
I sat straight up. Dick and I looked at each other as yipping noises got louder. He muted the TV. King Ragnar went silent, but the wild yips continued. The sounds weren’t coming from the TV. They were in our front yard.
We looked at each other. “Coyotes,” we said and ran out to the deck to see, but the critters had quickly moved on taking their yips with them.
“I wonder how long they were out there,” I commented. “I thought they were part of the show.”
We returned to Ragnar’s son. The wolves still howled. We should have known. Obviously a Viking drama wouldn’t stoop to the level of lowly coyotes.
Late winter seems to stir up the animal kingdom.
Several days later, we experienced the “fox” incident. On a late afternoon, as Dick and I discussed the possibility of grilling hamburgers on the deck, something outside in my bird feeding area caught my eye. Something not the norm.
The blob was too large to be a pine grosbeak and definitely not a chickadee. I took a better look, and grabbed Dick’s arm. “The fox is here!!”
We crept to the front door and looked out. Glossy red against a white snow bank, our resident fox romped, bushy tail switching. The fox had caught a mouse and was playing with it, like a cat. The mouse made a break for its freedom. The fox let it run long enough to engender hope in its little mouse heart, then reached out a paw and pulled it back. The fox grabbed it in its mouth and threw it in the air one way. Picked it up again and tossed it in the other direction. Back and forth, having whee of a time.
Although I’m not a big mouse fan, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pity for the poor little rodent. Finally, Mr. or Ms. Fox did a final toss and crunched the unfortunate creature in its mouth. To our surprise, it then buried the mouse in the snow.
I took several pictures (none turned out), and we stepped outside. The fox snuffled through old sunflower seeds, but stopped when he saw us. We moved closer. It walked to the edge of the woods, turned and observed us.
We spent a few minutes appraising each other, and the fox scampered into the underbrush. As of this writing, it hasn’t retrieved its mouse cache.
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