Fox in a field

Switzerland

24 Mar

I don’t know why it brings me so much joy, but it does. We both pause in our tracks - surveying the other, giving each other the once over. Then the twice over.

There is a fox that lives in a field not far from my house. It’s not a particularly large field or a neat field. It’s a pasture at rest where the cows graze in the summer months.

To be more precise, the fox doesn’t live in that field. He lives in a little strip of land next to it flush with young pine trees. I guess that’s where he sleeps in his foxhole.

But when I see him, he is wading through the thick grass, tail tucked as he hunts for food.

Should you want to see him, all you have to do is take a walk at dusk and look hard at the grass. If you concentrate and stay still, your eyes will spot a skulking shape, slung low to the ground.

“It’s a cat,” Marc would say.

I knew better. I could tell by the way he trotted and the poise of his tail that he was a wily and curious fox.

We have shared more than one interaction now, you see. In fact, there have been many glances stolen across this field as we sized each other up. It’s become a familiar ritual.

When I come to enjoy the dying light, I sit on a wooden bench under a big tree facing this same field. He comes to hunt. This has become a weekly affair since February.

I think he comes to expect it now, and he sits and waits for me before his evening games begin.

He’s also not always alone. This fox has a smaller mate that lingers by the tree line. She has been sitting this one out due to an injury - she’s lame in her hind leg. So he hunts for them both.

As the sun drops so does the temperature. And quick. I stay long enough to see if he makes a catch.

Nothing yet.

I watch him stalk closer to a murder of crows on the grass. He’s not that sneaky about it - and often sits up which disturbs the birds nearby.

Every time he closes in on a catch, a lone crow overhead caws a warning to his fellows in the field, and they scatter into the twilight.

The fox does not let up but settles on new prey.

Why do foxes fascinate me so? I wonder. Could it be that they are wild animals, living on the fringes of society - reminding us that the wilderness is not too far off? Are they a reflection of our own animal nature? Or they simply intriguing because we don’t have many foxes in South Africa where I’m from?

While I’m dissecting all this, the fox continues to sit and stake out his dinner. He continues to be.

Then I quietly nod, smiling at our dance, and turn to tuck tail and head home. He does the same. After a brief pause and a brisk sniff of the changing air, he pirouettes and darts back to his sheltered tree line and to his mate.