Fox and I

by Catherine Raven

  I live in a harsh land; wind, drought, and extreme temperatures keep me humble. Maybe that’s one reason I empathized with Fox and recognized him as an individual, not as a generic fox. I shied away from every adult fox but him. He, in turn, shied away from other people. We had very different personalities, the fox and I. He was outgoing, interacted with other foxes, and enjoyed the company of Tennis Ball. I was always alone, trying to disappear. And TBall just annoyed me. While it is not rare for a male fox to stay with a group after the weaning of the kits, it’s not common either. I’ve seen dens that never housed any adult males, and dens with males who disappeared soon after the weaning. As a male fox, he could live as a loner, but he chose not to. Despite those differences, we both worshiped the heat of the sun and the light of the moon. You will never convince me you need more than that to forge a friendship.

  And we were friends, the fox and I. Consider what happened when a five-headed ball cactus stepped between us. Before I dug up the cactus and replanted it along the front steps, the rare specimen had been growing on a steep, rocky slope in the far north fields, and I worried that an eroding cliff would swallow it or that it would tumble under a rock slide. And since I was moving it, why not next to my front steps, where I could admire it every day? Of course, I was planting the cactus right next to the steps where Fox liked to wander, but surely he could maneuver past a little round plant with a three-inch diameter.

  He was perusing the front of the cottage, looking tight and acting anxious. I was scraping tent caterpillars off cherry boughs, dropping them into glass jars, and tightening the lids. I thought he wanted company; he wasn’t hunting, and he was right next to the steps. He often took the opportunity to curl up and take some sunshine when he saw me sit down to play the role of protector. Fox raised a paw, bouncing it in the air before lowering it with a mechanical hesitation. Hooking one toenail into the edge of my freshly planted trophy cactus, he stared me down. One tiny cactus with spines so slight he could easily have unearthed it and tossed it aside. Instead, he left his toenail hooked into the cactus, refusing to release me from his squinty stare until I was only a few steps away. Heading back up the driveway, he stopped once, to look around his front leg and shoot me a final glare.

  I looked for him all the next day. He missed hearing about Horton, practicing yoga in the gravel, and hunting mice in the pasture. Ditto the next day, and then the snow began. Heavy spring snow rose like yeast bread between the bunchgrasses. I couldn’t sleep. Several hours shy of dawn, I threw a down coat over my naked body. A ball cactus had upset my friend. For the price of a little discomfort, I could set things right with him. I was bigger, older, and prehensile. Noblesse oblige. After digging up my prized cactus, I jailed it in a clay pot and placed it on the windowsill. Next day, Fox curled up on the vacated spot, staying so long his six-pound body left an impression in the dirt.

  I didn’t tell anyone about my captured cactus. Who replants in a snowstorm to appease a fox? Looking back, I would say that when a person thinks they are wrong for doing something that feels right, well, then, the definition of wrong needs to shift.

  When he wasn’t around, the potted cactus went outside to breathe some wild air. Most times, it tumbled out of its cell and rolled free. Truth is, like me, ball cactuses do not respond well to captivity. Anemia infected its fuchsia petals, and they paled and pinstriped. In all its resentment, the cactus’s blooms came to resemble pink ticking. I have never imprisoned another plant, though I maintain the right to do so someday.

  I don’t object to the idea of keeping plants confined indoors any more than I object to keeping animals in zoos. Although I’d never been to a zoo, I was hoping to go one day. I knew all about Knut, a polar bear cub in a German zoo whose mother abandoned him. From Knut’s story, I learned that polar bears would rather die than be raised by humans. A man identified as “an animal rights activist” claimed that “in the wild,” maternal abandonment is a death sentence. This segued into the statement that because wild and abandoned cubs died, death was natural, and therefore allowing little Knut to live was unnatural. It did not segue into the corollary that because nature is highly variable, not all abandoned cubs have died or will die. In other words, the activist assumed that only the most common behavior was natural, and that any behavior that was not average was unnatural.

  Somehow, zealots had turned an assumption into a mandate: avoiding unnatural acts was the directive of a zoo. Everyone was too emotional to realize that almost no one believed that assumption to be true. Did anyone think zoos were natural? Meanwhile, the same zealots extrapolated all this nonsense into an exuberant epiphany: Embrace nature and kill the cub. In fact, activists tried to sue zoo administrators to force them to kill baby bear Knut. I found two actual attributed quotes. One man—identified in the articles only as an animal rights activist—said, “In actual fact, the zoo needs to kill the bear,” and, “If a polar bear mother rejected the baby, then I believe the zoo must follow the instincts of nature. In the wild, it would have been left to die.” Wolfram Graf-Rudolf, then director of Germany’s Aachen Zoo, said, “The mistake has been made. One should have had the courage to put [Knut] to sleep much earlier.”

  Naturally, abandoned cubs struggle for life and come nearer to death than their cohorts with attentive mothers. Naturally, people help struggling, abandoned cubs. That’s what my instinct would tell me to do. I know, because Panther Creek’s abandoned fawn tested my instincts. And fox’s four kits tested my instincts when they ran wild in the slough while he slept. Our instinct tells us what is natural; our society tells us what is normal—if we let it.

  Nature is cruel: that’s a trope masquerading as a paradigm, in the sense that a carpetbagger might masquerade as a charlatan.

  I read that polar bears would rather be dead than raised by humans. Apparently, polar bears are bound to a higher moral standard than I am. I would prefer being raised by polar bears to being dead. I am so much less concerned with being “normal” than with simply being alive. Besides, attempting to be normal does not seem like a worthwhile pursuit for a busy person. Fox would not approve of wasting time pondering fathomless questions like What is normal? Choosing between life and death is a simple matter and always a good investment of your time.

  And how could I ignore the fact that a great many of the world’s children are enjoying a less nurturing upbringing than that which could be provided by polar bears?

  magpies

  The fox was sitting on the hillside when he recognized the long tail and bright white rump patch of a female harrier. She was flying fast over the alfalfa field below him and banking sharply. Eager to snatch voles, she slowed and dropped. Now she was flying too low, as if the air weren’t getting heavier and sinking around her. Having sensed the dropping air pressure, the fox, wary of the weather’s fickle nature, waited for the tempest from his new den site. Closer to the blue-roofed house, farther from the eagle’s nest, the new home nestled into the same cliffs as last year’s. But this new den offered a better view of the river’s big bend and a flashier facade: a rock terrace instead of a dirt patio. On the sunset side of the terrace, a cove of junipers horseshoed around one den door and opened toward the river. Despite surrounding a sumac bush and two rocks that were big enough to stand on, the cove had room for the vixen, three kits, and a trio of uninvited deer. Before the optimistic harrier finished circling the alfalfa field, the sky filled with sleet, hail, snow, sunlight, rain, and, finally, after a roaring wind, more sunlight.

  Near the den site, the kink-tailed kit was crouching under a maple-leafed currant bush watching Hurricane Hands use a pathetically long tool to rearrange a pile of dirt. The other kits chased each other to the big flattop rock above the main den site; the rock sheltered the kits like a roof when they hid underneath it and supported them like a patio when they sunbathed on its heated surface. A raven flew by carrying part of a bluebird in its beak. Landing near a toad-shaped boulder, it joined more ravens, all cro
aking and bursting into leaps, not even the highest of which could have topped a standing elk’s head. If ravens were already meat-drunk from feeding on the riverside elk carcass, it would be too late for him to wiggle in for a bite.

  Instead, he bounded down to the rabbit fields, where sprouting grasses were glistening under melting snow. When he arrived, deer were scattered on both sides of the cattail-clotted creek that bisected the field. Busy eating, they bent over like pea vines, aiming their trespassing rumps in every direction.

  When deer ate in that disorderly fashion, they hesitated to reorganize and move on. Instead, and despite the fact that grass tasted like air, they would keep eating until they bloated and their droppings covered the ground and emitted copious amounts of methane. Meanwhile, having all those hard-hoofed feet around would make it difficult for him to chase rabbits. Not that he couldn’t catch a rabbit in the shrubs, but they’d be harder to see and would taste like sagebrush. Getting rid of the deer before they destroyed the rabbit field would require prodding, persistence, focus, and bone-hard self-esteem. No amount of clapping from Hurricane Hands could accomplish that.

  At the edge of the field, a pair of does in the shadow of a creaking cottonwood were grooming each other’s necks with their teeth. He crept up so close that he could see that the deer’s legs were covered with ticks. When he leaned in to touch a whisker to the young doe’s ankle, she flicked her heel back as if he were no scarier than a bug. As if! While the doe sucked grass, the fox watched the underside of her throat. The loose skin under her jaw rippled like high water in the creek. He moved closer under one of the doe’s front knees and stared where her nose hit the ground. The ticks were sucking blood so fast, her leg looked blurry. The next time her tongue slipped out, he tapped one of his long black whiskers against her lower leg. The deer didn’t even flinch. On plan!

  Now that he was invisible, he slunk over to the deer farthest from the downhill run and watched the herd gobbling grass like it was sweet, dried huckleberry. He bounced behind the last bloated deer and brushed his tail against her flank. She jerked her head up, her eyes popped open, and she galloped down the hill, pushing all the deer in front of her off his rabbit field.

  He was having a productive afternoon when, overhead, a red-tailed hawk screamed and a white-headed eagle dove toward the field. The eagle hustled away, and another red-tailed joined the chase; shadows crisscrossed the rabbit fields. Before the commotion ended, the fox escaped into the brushlands. A spotted robin that had crouched in sagebrush to consider that morning’s hard rain was too small a meal to exchange for a wet tussle with a pungent shrub. He might return when the bird was drier or fatter.

  He was on his way to his favorite slough for a quick meal when he spied another harrier. Cruising slowly, swooping low, and occasionally disappearing, the harrier had the same idea as he did—pilfering voles. He shot his white-tipped tail straight up to alert Round Belly that he needed help.

  The magpie known as Tennis Ball to the girl and Round Belly to the fox thrust her head out from the opening of her nest, a big, dome-covered bowl in a short, twisted juniper. Three years old, its lower lip was receding, and its roof overhung far enough to darken the interior. The round-bellied magpie emerged from the nest sphere’s single entrance wondering about egg yolks that might be nearby under the tall, naked-legged juniper.

  After flying past a row of lilacs, she circled the juniper but found nothing underneath. She wasn’t surprised. The appearance of yolks had always depended on the unreliable mood and manners of the person in the blue-roofed house.

  The juniper’s middle branches were shaking under the weight of a twittering mass of waxwings vainly flashing red-and-yellow shoulder brooches. If she landed on a branch below them and pushed off forcefully, the branch would bounce upward and whip those little birds right off the tree. But the round-bellied magpie, a matriarch, had no time to lark around.

  Heading toward the river, she spied white-headed eagles standing in a flat, open field near an elk carcass. They were waiting for a golden-necked eagle to finish feeding, and she decided to join them. Her torn-tailed mate, already on the sidelines, recognized her unique wing stutter and looked up as she landed.

  They were still waiting when a flock of magpies from the far-away willows arrived, fanning out and circling the carcass. Someone would have to fly up to meet them. The visiting magpies were not aggressive, but decorum dictated that someone acknowledge them. She and her mate had always upheld decorum, but it was becoming tiresome. When no one flew to the task, she and her mate rose as they always did. She thought back to the days when his tail was elegant and full and life was less exhausting.

  When the golden-necked eagle retired to a wooden telephone pole, everyone jostled for a bit of the elk carcass. Waves of sun and snow washed over the mob of scavengers. A huge and noisy band of ravens, each bird twice her size, arrived, and the round-bellied magpie decided to settle for bugs. She jumped on the sway back of a white-tailed deer who was meandering across the field and picked ticks off its back. A fawn glanced up. Its sharp upturned nose, oversize eyes, and rounded forehead reminded her of the fox.

  With the round-bellied magpie still on its back, the white-tailed deer meandered with its herd alongside a slough. Overhead, a harrier’s shadow drove a juvenile robin into a wet sagebrush, where it shook a slow vole from under the shrub. The vole scurried in and out of bunchgrasses and through the fox’s favorite vole slough. The harrier followed the vole, dipping and rising with its prey. The matriarch knew that if the harrier had an easy time hunting the slough, it would return. She decided to make its hunt a little less easy. Leaping from the deer’s rump, she exposed her white belly to the owl-faced harrier. Announcing herself that way, like a big, bright target, was inherently dangerous. Anyone would think she was crazy or brave. But flashing her white breast didn’t just attract predators; it also sent a distress signal to her friends. She was not crazy or brave; she simply believed that she had more friends than enemies.

  A small pack of magpies joined the matriarch, and they chased the panicking harrier until it turned sharply and flew off into the hummocks.

  On a warm day, in early afternoon, the fox, having clipped a mouse in half, gagged on the head-end and dropped it into a buttercup. Nursing females left a sticky residue on his tongue and he avoided eating them. Eating only what you wanted to eat was one of the advantages that came with being fast, and clever, and not a deer. Magnificent hunters developed picky palates. Besides nursing females, big, belligerent males tasted foul, and he preferred a vole to a mouse in any case. Besides, a vole’s plump body would be free of rubber or plastic. Sometimes he would pick up a junked mouse, wait until the Alfalfa Flat foxes were asleep, and leave it outside their den.

  Today he was chewing the best bits off a vole while the parts that he didn’t favor slid down the flat blades of grass between his forearms. When he got up, Round Belly finished off the meal. Then she entertained him, twisting and twirling in midair. Flying was a neat trick, but he wouldn’t trade teeth for feathers. He ate voles; magpies ate scraps. Sometimes it seemed that a pied bird’s life was nothing more than a series of hard landings. She was still engaged in aerial acrobatics when he headed to the blue-roofed house to sleep in the sun. When he hunted voles and Hurricane walked alongside, the round-bellied magpie never joined them. Ever since the day he brought Hurricane a meadowlark, and she had screamed and flailed her arms at Round Belly, he had known that she and the magpie were enemies.

  It was early evening when the fox, running along a ravine, heard the rustling and clicking of partridges. They shot out from under a sticky current bush before he could grab one. The covey left a single bird behind, exposed but for a thick currant branch reaching across its back.

  After shifting her weight and lifting one scaly foot forward, the young bird froze. The fox steadied himself to wait until the bird ducked or took another step. A long wait was fair price for the occasional wild chicken. No
t so long ago he had waited until the sun had moved from one side of his face to the other for the chance to drop a white-feathered rooster.

  The round-bellied magpie was flying after a red-tailed hawk when she looked down on what might have been a rotting pumpkin: orange, dirty, and round. But the slightly fetid smell bothered her, and she flew closer. It was instead a feral cat creeping through short grasses, heading for the fox, who was still hunting in the ravine. She had known the fox since he was a suckling. He had grown to become a reliable source of food scraps for her. A hustler’s life lacked routine, but not responsibility. She watched as the orange cat melded into the dirt behind, downwind, and a few steps away from the fox. From that position, the cat was invisible to the fox, and ready to jump him, pin him down, and bite through his skinny neck. The magpie landed in the nearest saltbush to watch.

  I carved little depressions in the dirt with a stone and scooted yolk-filled eggshells inside them. Earlier that morning I had added the egg whites to a mix of black cherries and melted chocolate, saving the raw yolks for the animals. The cherries were from a package of frozen cherries, and the chocolate was Baker’s, semisweetened. I had pulverized Quaker Oats into oat flour and puréed the chocolate-cherry batter with a handheld mixer. After combining dry and wet ingredients and adding sliced almonds, I poured my cake batter into a glass baking dish.

  Gin was overflowing today with stocky gray birds flicking yellow-banded tails. Their head feathers were combed up into topknots. If the birds wore nametags, they would read: “Bombycilla garrulus.” If the nametags were in English instead of Latin, they would read: “silky-tailed chattering birds.” According to the Audubon Society, the common name was Bohemian waxwing. They were eating juniper “berries” and chattering. I was enthralled with their appearance. They were almost as elegant as Hungarian partridges and large enough to enjoy without binoculars. They would not stay long and might not use this migration route again. Waxwings were as fickle as they were beautiful.