My mom placed her Aldi order. She knows I don’t really have time to do that, but my father, who like me is a “little bit Asperger-y” (except he’s a lot Asperger-y) really loves their vegetable soup and eats it every day for lunch, and he also really wants to have two kinds of Aldi crackers, and their brand of margarine in the yellow tub (not the brown). She likes their baked potato chips, and sometime a can of the low-fat mushroom soup, which I also like. It’s somehow creamier than the full-fat kind.
Anyway, I was zooming toward the family home (in the next county; I came here to escape Dead Ex Stalker Husband) and I saw a fox. A red, red fox. It was the color of the stripes on a ginger tabby cat, with various shades, plus accented in white and a tiny bit of black. It’s bottle brush tail was standing straight up. It was taking a crap several yards off the side of the road.
I think I saw a couple of gray foxes once, many years ago, but I have never seen a red fox alive. I see them as roadkill occasionally. Lately roadkill makes me cry and I’m pretty sure someone is going to come revoke my half-breed redneck card if I don’t knock that shit off. But this fox was definitely alive! Quiveringly alive! And red! So very red! It was glorious, I say!
One red fox taking a crap by the side of the road = one moment of grace in a week full of crap.
And then there was another.
On the way home I saw a white tail buck. He was galloping up the road toward me. I hit the brakes. He kept coming. A car–or cars, not sure–behind me blew their horn; in the twilight I don’t think they could see the deer. He was not particularly close when he veered off into the brush on my right, his left. But he was close enough for me to judge his rack was almost as wide as my van, holy toledo. Magnificent.
I am not going to say where I saw either animal precisely, because while I have no ethical objections to hunting for food, and have eaten venison before and would again, I am not going to snitch out the location of this tremendous deer that gave me such a moment on a day when I so desperately needed it.
I saw a bigger buck twenty years ago, at the intersection of Rt 36 and Upper Valley Pike. Standing there under the blinking traffic light, looking quite frankly haughty. We stared at each other for the longest time before he turned and departed. I didn’t actually see where he went, just the turning and then poof! He was gone.
This concludes my wildlife report for today.