Fox returns

Sometimes what you hope happens…happens.

The grey fox appears at your feet, offering her wildness.

She knows the taste of blood, what it’s like to kill a dove, to tear into the downy warmth. Looking at her doggish mouth, black and white muzzle, a kind of smile, a kind smile, you realize she knows too the taste of love and loss.

Last year, such tenderness as her three kits crawled out of the culvert, nipping and rolling and playing with each other in the clover, how she licked them, how they climbed over her wanting her attention as she sat stoically alert, how as the weeks rolled on three became two, became one.

It was a story about the limits of vigilance and sheltering.

Don’t tell me she felt nothing to have those teeth at her belly, her nipples in fur, that suckling, as she poured herself into them.