There’s a fox skulking around my yard

A family (“skulk”) of red foxes lives a few lots down from my home. Foxes travel as singles and most of us neighbors like watching “the fox” trek on the riverside of our homes prowling for food. We’re glad the mice and rabbit populations are kept in check; the fox is both mysterious and amusing to watch.

“The fox” I reference is not the first fox I have admired and watched. “The fox” is likely a series of foxes (average lifespan of a fox is 3 years). “The fox” is a second, or third, or fourth generation immigrant to life in an urban landscape. Yet, I maintain the term “THE fox” considering it as a singular, non-human member of the neighborhood.

In recent years, “the fox” seems bolder. It has crossed my driveway as I head out for a walk; our cat (the declawed one!) initiated a standoff with it; and last winter, the fox parked outside of my bedroom window to enjoy a frozen rabbit carcass before heading home.

To call the fox an immigrant is inaccurate. The land where I live was once prairie, then farm/ranchland. It’s now a beautiful river spot, tucked back from a busy street with tall oaks and buckthorn forests. We humans are the ones who developed around the skulk settlement. WE are the immigrants. We’ve created a pre-dominantly non-fox community and “allow” the foxes to stay IF they don’t infringe on our human life. We admire their exotic ways of moving and being. We respect their boldness in our environment. And yet…if “THE fox” crossed a line? If it threatened my safety or comfortable way of life…whose preferences would prevail? The needs of the humans supersede the ways of the fox without question.

My neighborhood is like other communities - those with the means to develop and control the environment call the shots. Those without the power, adjust to survive. Thinking broadly about this raises all kinds of complex, uncomfortable, ambiguous feelings for me. So most days, I just live my life. I take for granted that I am the bigger, bolder, more powerful member of this neighborhood. I KNOW that my needs, my preferences, my safety are paramount. I find it off-putting that the fox is so daring as to enter MY yard, approach MY animals, and feast on MY vermin.

My neighborhood is a system. It’s not that most individual neighbors are fox-haters. It’s just that we have structured the neighborhood for humans to thrive and foxes to survive. It’s the way things work. It’s how the SYSTEM works.

- jt