January 30

Deep in the woods early this morning, a fox was calling a warning cry. It was a strange and unsettling sound – a series of clipped barks and earnest cries that signaled some sort of danger.

We haven’t seen the foxes around here since the fall. I was beginning to think that the frequent vixen from late summer had moved on or worse come to some unfortunate end. We enjoyed watching her throughout last summer, coming and going in search of food to bring her litter of three that sheltered beneath an out building down the road at Robinson’s Greenhouse. She became quite tame in a way, not minding if we stopped to watch her trot by through the woods.

I had begun to think that she had moved on this fall, after the kits were grown enough to be on their own. This morning was a bit of a shock, really. The fog from yesterday still lingered, and the waning gibbous moon filtered through enough to give the landscape a twilight look, though the trees of the lower woods were hidden through the mists. I stepped out on the deck to feel the air and to listen to the water dripping off the roof (which is always a pleasure in January). Apart from a gentle southern breeze that stirred the trees and moved the wind chime, it was fairly quiet.

The cries came out of nowhere, from far off in the lower woods. It was startling to the point that it really did make the hair on the back of my head stand up, as the saying goes. I can only imagine what would cause such distress. Perhaps a fisher cat or coyote was on the hunt. The cry was so unnerving that I decided in no way was I to investigate.

Only one other time and also in winter, can I recall such a visceral cry. Something must have attacked a rabbit near our house, and the cry of what must have been its death throes were simply frightening to hear.