If I start at the end, I might catch my breath. If I start at the beginning, it might make more sense. My dilemma is that I dont know where the beginning is.
Her smell: Let's start with her smell. In winter, when we walk the trail through the woods, her musk fills the air. Not burn-your-eyes as bad a musk as a skunk, but still pervasive. We learned that she was using one of the downed black walnut trees for her den. In early spring, her tracks became more evident, presumably because she was leaving the den more often to find food for her litter.
Spring turned into summer and the trail through the woods became deep with weeds and ticks. Our neighbor started seeing young kit foxes playing in her yard. I thought to myself, "what a great thing to see looking out your window!" Time passed.
Every now and then, I would catch sight of her fluffy tail and hindquarters dashing across the road, into the ditch and across the field. Weeks passed. The month of June began quiet and cool, but rainless. Early one morning, as I wandered through the garden, I found a little tuft of black and grey fur. When I bent to pick it up, it was the tail of a squirrel. No sign of the rest of it.
The very next day I found a dead mole in our yard. Not eviscerated, so not killed by a cat. Interesting though in part because I have never seen a mole in our yard.
The following day was like someone opened the doors of the abattoir. One dead juvenile robin, one baby starling, one chipmunk.
That night I could once again smell her faint musk on the air, almost skunk-like... but my eyes didn't burn. I closed the windows when the smell became too much for Nancy to bear. Somewhere in the early morning hours I heard something that can best be described as the sound of a kid screaming. It was obnoxious and loud. Loud enough to be heard through closed windows. At three in the morning, I assumed it was one of the local coyotes tormenting a fawn as often happens after the spring births.
Early the next morning I went out and began string trimming the fence line. I had been running the machine maybe 20 minutes and was getting close to the corner of the fence that borders the woods. Suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I can see a flash of red midway up our deer fence. I stopped the machine, lifted my facemask, helmet and safety glasses off my face to find a red fox stuck, half way through the fence. Probably three feet off the ground, fully half of her body was through the fence, but her hips couldnt get through the wire fence. She was dangling off the ground, suspended by her hindquarters. She was doing everything she could to get out. Twisting up and through the fence, getting more and more stuck the harder she tried. But she wouldn't go backwards.
I ran inside, trying to figure out how to explain what had happened. Leto was awake and starting to head into the shower when I caught them. I think I said something about call Wildlife Rehabilitation and maybe mentioned a friend of ours who cares for injured animals. Not terribly lucid.
Then I put on my thick Carhartt jacket I save for when I need to prune the roses. Grabbed my heavy gloves and went back outside to see if there was a way I could coax the fox back out of the fence.
By the time I got back to the corner, it was apparent that any effort I made to help her back up was going to be met with teeth. Not a happy patient. I called out to Leto to bring me pliers and maybe wire cutters. They came over to the corner with an armful of implements of destruction. Best of all, they brought the bolt cutters! Nice long reach to keep those teeth at bay!
I walked over calmly, speaking softly and reassuringly. I kept hoping that maybe she'd get the clue and just back out of the hole she was stuck in. Nope. She made one last twisting effort to get free which resulted in her bending backwards up and over herself, twisting almost 180 degrees so that her head and back feet touched but she was now looped through two holes in the fence mesh. Sigh.
The good news was that her bity end was now facing away from me, allowing me to get in closer with the bolt cutters. One swift cut and one tiny welded wire popped, and she was free. She left a tiny blooded tuft of fur and was gone! I stood there shaking for a good ten minutes. Then I started to cry. I was overwhelmed with the feeling of shame and guilt that I had left her in such a horrible precarious position all night long. I should have come out to figure out what the noise was all about. I should have checked on her.
Now she was gone. Safe.
The next morning, I was out tending to the early summer growth of the thornless blackberries. It was time to start tying new canes into the trellis. I was occupied and my eyes were looking down when I heard a swift motion coming through the woods. Looking up I saw her climb halfway up the fence and then dive through the gap in the fence like it was a window. Swoosh! She was inside the yard. Walking towards me at a fair clip, sniffing everything as she ambled my way. With the blackberry brambles partially obscuring her view of me, she came within about six feet before she smelled me. Looking up she and I made eye contact. Held it. Then I asked her how she was doing. She tilted her head just like Georgia Rose used to. We called it Wookie-head-tilt. I think that was the moment she realized I wasn't a blackberry shrub. And without so much as a goodbye, she turned and was back up the fence and through the fence like it was water. Poof. Gone.
Once again, I stood there and shook. Just astonished to feel such great fortune to be a part of such a marvelous experience. Stillness. My heart beat so hard in my chest that I could hear it in my ears. I kept watching the woods, waiting to see movement in the undergrowth letting me know where she'd gone. Nothing. She was gone.
A few days later, I was sharing these stories with our neighbor on the other side of our little woods. Turns out, the fox had four kits this year. Even better, my neighbor had been taking photos and videos of the kits playing in her side yard. (These are Rebecca's images above) Apparently tossing around the dead critters that the older fox had brought back for them.
About a week later the foxes found their way into the chicken enclosure at Rebecca's house. Not a single chicken survived. No corpses. Nothing. A few days passed and I was working on digging out our new pond and I came across a few chicken feathers. Setting my eyes low into the brush, I found multiple half-eaten carcasses cached for later eating. All of which is to say, the foxes have all grown up nice and healthy. They are off on their own, learning to hunt throughout the fields and woods around us. Hopefully next spring, we'll see another litter of kits.
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