w h e r e / w i l d / f o x e s / r o a m

Lately the air has been heavy, a bit like my mood.

Thick, cloying, it clings to absolutely everything. Never more so than after a period of intense heat. Clouds bubble like a boiling pot overhead. Menacing, threatening to burst and spill down in a gigantic pour, not a gentle sprinkle.

The house stores humidity like a solar panel.

As part of the morning refresh I'll pad barefoot across the floors to lift blinds, pull curtains and reach for the latch of the window.

We live in an urban area. Thankfully in the older established part of town. Our street first saw bricks raised in 1948. The old railway line that runs parallel was probably still in use then. Now it is paved and tree lined as a track that links the old town to the villages beyond, by foot, and paws and pads.

Twilight brings the calling cries of Foxes. That veil between dusk, night and dawn. Eerily it can sound like someone is in pain, agony, writhing. I hear they can shapeshift their voices, mimic that of a dog, or another sound altogether. Coughing, hacking, anything than that awful murderous sound is fine by me.

I envisage them weaving silently between fence, gate and road. Legs trotting along, head slinking low, bushy tail hanging like a brush. Whiskers twitching, and their calls to each other, messengers of the night.

As I reached for the latch, there is a sound that escapes as you push. Like a vacum from a container. In that split second of early morning light she pads across the fence, baby rabbit in jaws, limp, lifeless. She sees me, I see her in awe. For I find them mystical, spiritual and just so beautiful. I belive where possible in co-existence. After all, we are all part of the larger eco system, and natural cycle of life.

She startles at the sound, drops the rabbit on my neighbours side and slinks off at a pace.

She looked tired. Worn thin from raising and nursing young. Food is scarce, and I literally wept at that meal she dropped. I saw she needed it, had wished I hadn't chosen that moment to open the window, that somehow she was bold enough to keep it clenched in her jaw and run anyway.

I sobbed for the desperation she finds herself in, navigating our rate of housing blocks that tear and rip generational land from above her den. That the ancient markers of hedgerow and path are eroded and replaced with concrete and unfamilar scents. I wept that she was dog tired, literally.

I had a need to tell her that I was a safe one, a knower of the land, the seasons and the co-existence of integrating her wild life into our edges. That she could shelter whenever she needed, that any food she captured could have safe passage across our boundary.

I quickly scurried with a shovel to my neighbours side, waving through their window incase they saw me. I collected the rabbit and took it to the back of our garden in the hope she may return at night again. I said a prayer for its tiny life, but made peace that it is a natural cycle. That they exisit within that framework. That it wasn't in vain, that it could nourish another, that this chain as heartbreaking as it is was, held meaning and sense.

She never returned. I listened out at twilight for her, but was met with the silence of night and the faint rustle of trees.