Little Red Fox
Thursday, Apr. 24, 2003, 11:34 p.m.

Question: I wonder what that little red fox was up to?

What I Learned: There's a lot going on in my backyard.

We had a fox stop by our backyard last week. It was pretty exciting. There was a bunch of birds up in the trees taking turns diving down on this little red fox and making a real racket while they went about it. Eventually the fox decided enough was enough and left with a pack of swooping crows on its tail like streamers on a kite. It took a while for the caw-caw of the crows to fade into the distance. We might have been left with the gentle sound of windchimes filling up the silence that was left but they�ve been tangled up since last summer and we were left with the distant hum of traffic instead. It almost sounds like the ocean sometimes and will do until I get around to fixing those chimes. Maybe I should make my own chimes such as these as photographed by chubbychic - talk about creativity and practicality joining forces.

We don't usually see much in the way of the exotic here in the heart of suburbia. Once my son said he saw a deer in the backyard. My husband refused to believe him. He swore the kid must have seen a dog - a big dog - and mistaken it for a deer. The kid was at least 10 years old when he saw the thing prancing around the back yard. I think he could tell the difference between a deer and a dog but my husband would not revise his opinion even after the local paper ran an article about a couple of deer that had crashed through a local store window less than a mile down the road from our house. Was it a deer in our yard then? Nope � according to him, it was still a dog the kid saw.

There are a host of other backyard buddies that everyone can agree do pass through our backyard. They include:

• A rabbit that stands up on its hind legs - the better to eat the leaves off my rose bushes
• An overfed black and white cat unsuccessfully patrolling under the hedges
• A pugnacious cardinal that is drawn to engage in an ongoing confict with his own reflection in any window he finds
• A chipmunk that needs an immediate contract with Disney
• A roving bunch of rude crows � most annoying on a sleep-in morning
• And of course, the requisite squirrels performing acrobatics across the top of the split rail fence at the top of the hill

Every once in a while a kid climbs over the fence and trots down the hill behind our house. I am truly relieved to see these kids cutting through our yard because they are easily identifiable as kids and no one can tell me I am confusing them with a large stray dog.

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