The past couple years foxes have been making a comeback in my neighborhood. There have been various sitings: walking down the sidewalk, cutting through someone’s yard and even trying to take a nap on our front lawn. I’ve never been clear if it’s the same fox that has been spotted multiple times or different ones. When 2021 rolled around I hadn’t spotted any foxes in the neighborhood and thought maybe they had moved on to live elsewhere.
Part of helping my foot to recover from having the Brostrom surgery is to go for walks. Usually, I go in the afternoon but one day, in August, I decided to go at dusk. I was really hopeful if there were foxes still around this would be my best chance at seeing one since they are most active at dusk and dawn.
After walking up and down a couple streets I was on the verge of giving up but there was one more street I wanted to check first before I decided to give up on a siting entirely.
There’s a long, tree lined, cul-de-sac I love to walk down. It’s where I’ve seen variety of wildlife over the years from deer to hawks to foxes. In fall the leaves turn beautiful shades of red, gold and orange. When I walk the fallen leaves crunch under my feet. In August not many leaves had fallen yet but someone did drop a brownie.
After walking to the end of the curl-de-sac and turning around to walk back down I figured I would see no foxes tonight
Just as I was mentioning this to my parents, who went walking with me, one of them pointed down the street and showed me a fox had just stepped out from behind a car. It was walking down the street ahead of us.
We kept our distance as we started back to make sure to give the fox its space. Initially, it didn’t notice us or didn’t care. It seemed to be on a mission. But, as it started walking towards the spot where the dropped brownie lay occasionally it turned around to look at us but never broke its stride. We made sure to keep a bit farther back just in case we were making it nervous.
Then it quickly grabbed the brownie and trotted off to the backyard of one of the houses. We got a glimpse of it burying the brownie along the edge of a fence and we assumed it would come back later for the treat it hid.
I haven’t seen my neighborhood fox since that night but I will always remember the story of “The fox & The brownie.”
