Fox In The Hayfield
Similar to a guerrilla farmer watering weed off the grid, this last week before the rain I was hauling trash cans full of water in the back of the Polaris (which is like a 4-wheeler on steroids) out to the hay field behind the bocce court to water 5 newly planted 15 foot tall willow oaks. I was siphoning out the water using 10 foot sections cut from an old garden hose. There is a Zen-like quality to time spent in a hayfield under the late afternoon sun waiting for water to drain from a fifty-gallon trash can into a heavy mulch ring around the base of a willow oak tree. Bernadette joined me on one of these trips and I went pssst but she could not hear me. Hey, psssst, I said again, making barely any noise at all. Clearly she was ignoring me in favor of staring off under the late afternoon sun into the near distance at a small cemetery on the property's edge. As it was fairly important news I risked all by raising my voice, and said, hey Bernadette, there is a fox, and when she said where I said right in front of you. It wasn't really right in front of her. It was about 10 feet away and to the left. We were both very still. The hay in the immediate area surrounding the five trees was pretty well beat down. We weren't hiding from the fox and the fox wasn't hiding from us. It was hot, sunny and still. Bernadette had brought us mint juleps and the ice in them melted while we watched the fox, first come closer--close enough at five feet away to scare me a little--and then move away to the mulch ring of another tree, a safe distance of twenty-five feet or so, where it commenced to lollygag, nibble on shredded bark bits, and do playful swivel-hip maneuvers in the new soft and smelly bedding.
View current page
...more recent posts