So this one day, I was taking a walk through the streets of Mayberry (the town where I live), minding my own business (although I may or may not have been peeking into people’s uncovered windows as I walked on the sidewalk past their houses, so I guess technically I really wasn’t minding my own business…in fact, I’d venture to say that half the time I claim to be minding my own business I am actually nosing in on other people’s…) when I started to get chased by an unidentified species of animal.
It was really strange, being chased by an animal without knowing exactly what was chasing me. Very Alfred Hitchcock. Eventually, I decided it was a fox. I’ll describe the animal for you, and you can tell me if you think I was right:
Smallish; its head reached the middle of my calves; pointy ears; golden fur; long, bushy tail with white fur on the bottom; sinister, beady little eyes; and a wide, toothy grin that said to me (if foxes could speak English, that is), “I am very sly, as foxes are, and I would like to eat you for a snack.”
See? Totally sounds like a fox.
But then, I couldn’t be sure it was a fox, because one, I grew up in Arizona, where there is an abundance of desert coyotes, but a stark shortage of foxes, and I had therefore never seen a fox in my life; and two, Mayberry is a town located in the flat prairie land of Southern Alberta, Canada, and I was pretty sure foxes were more of woodland creatures than farm pets. So why should a fox have been chasing me?
Nevertheless, the facts were these: I was walking home after picking up my mail at the local watering hole, and a few blocks away from our house, this FOX! sneakily approached me from behind a hedge. He was following me with that sly, greedy look on his face, and he wasn’t at a very safe distance—when I say he was following me, I mean he was right on my heels, nearly in the same square of sidewalk as me with every step I took. He was not very shy, that fox. When I slowed down, he slowed down, acting all, “What, lady? You’re walking slower, thinking I’ll get bored and chase somebody else for dinner? Okay, I’ll just meander over to this tree here and act like I’m not picturing you dead in a bloody, dismembered mess at my feet…” When I sped up, he would have a mini-heart attack, thinking I was getting away, so he’d frantically run in front of me and stop, facing me on the sidewalk, just daring me to pass him.
He was menacing.
By the time I got in front of my house, I was really worried that he wouldn’t let me through the door. Luckily, I made a mad dash for the garage, and since I had longer legs than him, I reached it just in the nick of time. I hurled myself over the threshold and SLAMMED! the door behind me, almost smashing the fox’s wily nose in the process, but I didn’t care. Because you know me: blogger by day; renegade vigilante protector-of-the-neighborhood-kids by night. All the better to smell you with, Mr. Fox…
Anyway, when Poor Kyle got home from work that day, I told him how close I had come to being the main course for a fox’s feast, and he laughed.
“No way,” he said, “there aren’t any foxes here. That’s insane.”
Smugly, I whipped out my cell phone, with which I had furtively photographed my perpetrator during the harrowing experience, because we all know that if we don’t take pictures of events, they never really happened, and here is what I showed him for proof {and I do apologise for the poor quality of these photos, but you know, when one is being pursued by a carnivorous beast, one can’t really focus the camera phone as well as one normally might}:
Totally a fox.
Right? It’s a fox?
That bushy tail? That hungry grin? Fox?
And Poor Kyle looks me dead in the eye, and says, “Camille…that is a dog.”
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