Finishing up my cup of coffee and bowl of cereal, I was a bit startled when I looked out the window over the sink. Less than sixty feet away, I saw a large male fox headed straight toward the house. We’ve seen a female fox several times in the years we’ve lived here at Blair. Sometimes trotting across the yard, sometimes through the horse pen, once over at an abandoned house where she was watching her two kits play in the yard.

This was the first time I’d seen a male. Might be the time of year when a fox’s thoughts turn to love…

Whatever brought him by in such close proximity did not keep him here long. He started to head down the hill toward Fleek’s Market but there was a strange truck and horse trailer backed into his path. The combination of truck and trailer might have made it even stranger to Romeo’s perception. He took a couple  steps, then stopped. He looked toward the new contraption, then over toward the garage, then over toward 190^th Road.

I’m guessing that most surviving foxes have figured out that hesitation in daylight in close proximity to humans rarely leads to pleasant encounters. He took one last look toward his apparently usual route then quickly adapted and loped away toward the northeast. By the time I thought to look out our dining room windows, he had disappeared.

He was quite the handsome fellow in his full flush of winter fur, darker red than the female we’d seen several times. A fringe of black around his neck and ears and up the lower part of his legs. Taller and heavier, too. Although Google tells me that males mate for life and are heavily involved in helping raise the young, we’ve not witnessed that.

Doesn’t mean it didn’t or doesn’t happen; just means that if it does, we haven’t witnessed it.

I reckon it’s sort of human to be suspicious of things that we haven’t seen ourselves. Dubious about things we haven’t experienced. Kind of like Apostle Thomas who insisted on firsthand evidence instead of witness testimony.

Human, yes… But that doesn’t mean we should try to turn skepticism into an art form. Many a life has shortchanged itself by avoiding many potentially enriching relationships, activities, and experiences because we’d rather shortchange ourselves a thousand times than risk it once by someone else.