Screaming Fox

I have never been a good sleeper but last night looked like it might be a good one. First I was awoken by VERY loud music at 12:25. It was Annie Lennox rocking out, the bass thumping through the floor and the voices coming through. Relax, I told myself, don't say anything. At 1:04 I ran downstairs and yelled over David Gilmour that it was late and I was trying to sleep. I did not find out until this morning that there wasn't work for S today. Oh.

But then I went back to bed with my heart thumping and just as I drifted off to sleep I heard a terrible cry. I couldn't figure out if it was a cat or raccoon or even a bird of prey. Then the motion sensor light below my window went on. I jumped out of bed to see what tripped it. It was a fox and it was SCREAMING. Going across one side of the dirt driveway to the other side into the trees. It was alone and screaming. It came out at the end of the trees, screamed, and then went off up the road.

There is a resident fox across the road in a small nature area. Sometimes I will see it at daybreak. It is always silent. I think that something was threatening its territory and it followed it over to our place. Inspection of the area doesn't find anything alarming.

When I first moved out here our neighbor used to feed the raccoons dog kibble. I had never seen such huge raccoons. They would lumber up out of the ravine and eat the kibble. One got in our basement and left huge paw prints and a big turd. Definitely not the cat! Thankfully those neighbors moved and the buffalo raccoons left too.

It will be strange to live in a city again. The building I am moving to is right on a park with walking trails and a small lake. The park leads into a nature preserve. I wonder if I will see deer and foxes and hawks and owls. Living here on my hill has been good. I will miss my porch and the tree outside my window. It will be strange to look across a pool over to a building. Here, I have been isolated and spoiled. I am looking forward to planting shrubs in boxes and doing gardening on a very small scale. I hope there won't be any screaming foxes.