Early this morning, the last fox cub was lost to some unknown cause. Perhaps entangled with the hoof of a horse, I really don’t know, but I found it in the pasture next to the house – not in the dog run, not in the road, but with the four horses kept close to the house. Its body was still soft.
Now, the past several months have been an interesting time. The first few nights of cub observations permitted me to see that their mom had taken them out hunting in their back yard – which also happens to be my back yard. The babies were scurrying the yard with their mother and they covered ground quickly, often cat-like in their movement. There was no question as to what they were looking for, and, if you recall, I set them up to be caught by my dog if they entered the area where the geese slept – that did happen to one of them. After that night, I only ever regularly saw one baby – every night when the sun went down and continuing for hours as the dogs barked with its every move. I awoke daily to half-eaten frogs and scat on my front porch and immediate surroundings, on anything and everything. For two nights during that time, the cub sat in front of the house looking dead at it and barking incessantly, as if howling at the moon. What a strange thing to do.
Though the porch has been cleaned with bleach, an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Limenitis arthemis, landed on the cub’s spot. They like to eat scat.
This morning, when I found the dead cub, I was mowing the field with my tractor and brush hog. I scooped the cub up with the tractor bucket and hauled it several acres away and dropped it off for decomposition. As cute as the fox cub had been, the filth and scat they leave behind each night were really just too much, and I surely was done with it. I read once that they were dirty, and they are.
As I drove off onto the other field, I had an epiphany: the fox as scavengers leaving scat droppings in the company of others serves as a metaphor for folk who do similarly to other people. Hence, mind your own business.
| Copyright © 2019 by Bettina Sperry |
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