Urocyon Cinereoargenteus

The fox lopes away across the bronze and crackled grass, a red, white, and grey wild thing, undeniably untamed. I stand, dressed in my hurriedly thrown-on winter clothing, scarf askew and heels halfway into too-big boots. I stand and watch it saunter briskly into the dusk-dimmed and dull November horizon, until it disappears into the reeds next to the crumbling stone wall lined with regal elms and baroque maples.

We were rival partners in a dance that had gone on for weeks, circling each other over the hen coop. The rooster had fallen prey to an owl earlier in the summer, and the fox, aware of the looming snow, had seen an opportunity, interrupting many mundane moments over the autumn in its attempts to find a way into the flock.

It was in one of these moments of panicked squawkings that I had rushed outside, hastily turning off the caramelizing onions, attempting to intervene. Moments later I found myself standing outside the pen, my hasty counter-attack too little, too late. Tears coursed down my cheek, pattering onto the frozen ground, as I stared at the grisly art piece of feathers and sinew, bones and blood, tangled amidst the black and white plastic rope fencing which was stretched and sagging after too many winters of New England snowfall. It was impossible to tell if she, if the creature that was now the carcass, had been caught up in the netting before or after the fox came – I prayed that it was the latter, pushing away the horrific ramifications of the fact that I had not seen this specific hen, one with a name, since the day before.

I prefer to bury things, believing that every creature deserves the comforting weight of the cold, fragrant earth. That way I can tuck them respectfully into the ground and pretend that flesh gives way elegantly to bone, instantly and poetically, pretend away the worms and decay, the slow and unavoidable rot that leads eventually to the picturesque macabre of smooth white. But as I stand in front of the pen I am painfully aware of the month, of the insurmountable hardness of the frozen November ground, and of the true tangle of flesh and fence that I stand confronted with. And so, I spare one look at the tree line, force myself to look once more at the striking mess beneath the briars, and tramp back to the kitchen, my ragged breath the only discordant note amidst the crunching snow and whistling wind. I go about fixing dinner, hoping that the fox will return for its own meal, hoping that it will at least give the tragically mundane occurrence a greater purpose.

It comes back a week later. With no meddlesome and pampered human to interfere with purely animal business, its plans have gone without a hitch. All that remains is a widely strewn array of feathers and some sumptuous and delicate drops of blood upon the snow – not smeared or splattered, but tastefully dotted rubies, sunken beneath the crisp white surface, as red as the moment they spilled, frozen on contact with the soft carpet of ice crystals. There are two lines of little canine footprints, daintily and expertly leading down and up the hill, the incline dotted with a repetitive feather or two along with their accompanying sunken jewels of blood.

I follow them up, wading through the high snow, each step bringing my knees nearly to my chest. I’m hot and perspiring despite the frigid air, not yet warmed even pitifully by the wan winter sun in an anemic blue sky. I zigzag as quickly as I can up the hill, balancing haste and focus, the garish trail hard to follow.

I pant, making my way up amidst the cold and silent trees, knowing it to be a selfish and pointless errand; there is no way the hen is still alive. This is not a rescue mission; there are no cutaways from my painfully inadequate ascent to the struggling hen, holding out against the practiced predator, of me racing against time so that I may break out from the tree line and release her from capture. There is not an audience waiting with bated breath for the outcome of this story; no, not on this merciless winter morning. The hen is dead, neck grasped firmly between gleaming and gothically sharp teeth. And yet I continue – telling myself that I am doing so for closure; really just hoping to see this beautiful creature that can destroy so simply, this creature so remote from our tangled human world, perfectly refined by millennia of existence.

The trail peters out at the edge of the top field in a circled track of deliberate activity. Beneath the pecker poles, overshadowed by the tree line, right at the edge of that definite and yet un-markable point where trees become a forest, is the first sign of animalistic rending—no longer the elegant ruby-red droplets, but a great stain of blood—enough to tint the frigid air with the smell of iron mixed with the lurid yellow proof that the fox tore into the crop. But surrounding the gruesome snow angel of footprints there is nothing, no more blood, elegant or otherwise, and no more discernible tracks amidst the uneven and craterous snow around and under the tree limbs and canopy and stones.

I circle the same area multiple times, feeling that I’ve gone too far to not see the investigation through, when I finally spot it. A mound of snow between two medium-sized maples growing up against a once firmly stacked stone wall that has now crumbled and slid into aesthetic disorder. It is about the size of my torso, patted lovingly into shape by dozens and dozens of little canine footprints, only the very edge of the left side stained a pale pink. Not a single feather shows through the refrigerating snow, so diligently has the fox done its work.

I stand there, amidst the discordant rays of strengthening sunlight, sweaty and yet cold in a ragtag medley of proper and improper winter clothing. I must have at least a quart of snow in each of my hastily shoved-on boots, the calf of my sweatpants soaked and icy, my overly large socks bunched painfully at my ankle. None of this sways my awe: this clever, beautiful, brutal, violent, expert little fox has buried the remains of the chicken in the snow, ingeniously preserving its dinner away from its den.

My cheeks heat with chagrin—what right do I have to be here? To have risked interrupting the fox in its work feels like an inexcusable trespass upon a sublime sanctity possessed only by that which is truly wild. A trespass upon a ritual, pure and purposeful. The fox’s cruel and yet poetic act exists freely outside of our ever-changing and unjust human definitions of morality. There is nothing, not a single shred of something macabre or perverse in this murder – it is an innocent exchange. I think for one moment I fully understood the truth of matter being neither destroyed nor created but simply traded between vessels in an endless and brutal dance. It’s a savage beauty that can exist only in these woods between two true animals.

And so I turn, reluctant to leave this clarity, knowing that it will fade, and I will be sad and anxious and have to figure out how to protect the rest of the hens and make breakfast and change into dry clothes and tell this story which will be ever diminished by the very act of telling. But I spare a glance back towards the tree line as I reach the top of the incline I must half stumble, half slide down, a glance back toward the fox’s world, a world of sharp cold and teeth and bone and survival, a world where the concept of freedom does not need to exist because it is inherent. A world free of our preconceptions of “chaos” and “order,” free from the burden of categories and labels and morals and biases that entrap humanity. Where true chaos creates true free will—life in the moment as our hijacked animal minds, trammeled by predictive reasoning and desperate needs for constraints and systems will ever know. And so, I spare myself a moment to long for that world, before I have to return to mine.

I never saw the fox again. When the next hen passed peacefully in her sleep of old age I placed her in those hallowed woods, an unsullied offering. An entreaty.