I got up this morning later than usual as I hadn’t slept well in the middle of the night. I looked out the back door onto our rather unmowed back garden (=yard for the UK-challenged). There had been an orange candle in the garden and I had put it on the windowsill rather than throwing it out (you never know when you’ll need a candle, I guess). It was on the patio this morning. I thought “Wind’s blown it off the windowsill” and put it out of my mind as I started to make breakfast.
HWMBO came downstairs, we ate breakfast, and then as I began my morning trawl through the emails he called me to the back door and asked what had happened to the candle. I told him that I thought it had blown off the windowsill. He said, “And there’s something else in the garden. Get the key and take a look.” So I did. As I opened the door, what should we see but a fox, streaking out from under a shrub. We only saw his tail in our garden, but then he climbed over the fence between the next garden and the one next to that, and we saw all of him. He was about as big as a largeish cat (overfed cat) or a smallish dog (underfed dog). I picked up the candle and it had toothmarks all over it. So the wind hadn’t blown it off the windowsill; the fox had jumped up thinking the candle was edible and been disappointed.
I hear about urban foxes quite often, but have never, until this morning, seen one.
HWMBO hopes that the fox hasn’t eaten our squirrels, as they’ve been scarce lately.
Urban foxes are said to have become very bold in recent times. They enter homes through doors carelessly left open, looking for food. When caught by surprise, they have been knwon to bite! Nevertheless, they are pretty creatures. 🙂
I live very close to the Potomac River near Mt. Vernon, and we frequently have red foxes visiting the yard – I love seeing them.
Somebody walking by our house in Gloucester as I was coming down the front yard last month asked if I had seen the fox that had just run out of our yard and across the street. I hadn’t.
My father said he saw a fox from our bathroom window about 25 years ago.
I don’t think I’ve ever seena fox in the wild. And we have enough squirrels to feed a whole family of foxes.
At first, I thought you were writing about **FFoooooxxxxeesss** a la Steve Martin. But no. It was the better kind.