Morning Marauder

After our recent poultry losses our neighbor saw at least one culprit with his own eyes. He said it was a red fox. He had been going out very early in an attempt to eradicate our exloding gopher population. While Dean waited patiently for the gophers to pop their blunt heads out of the ground so he could blast them, the fox came strolling by, probably looking for another easy chicken dinner.

Dean told me it was usually around 6:30 in the morning that the fox came by. Ordinarily that's a little early for me, but this morning I was sleeping a bit restlessly (more so than usual) so I got out of bed around 6:15, got dressed and brought my camera out. It was still dark and the sun was just coming up. I waited about 20 minutes but I didn't see any sign of the fox so I went back in. I figured either he came by already or he wasn't coming by today.

About an hour later I was having some coffee, reading the paper, and keeping an eye on the baby when the phone rang. Usually when it rings that early it's a wrong number. It's people looking for a rural school whose phone number is one off from ours and for some reason even 411 transfers them to our home number. I usually just give them the correct number to dial and go on with my business. But this time it was Dean, all excited. "Hey, the fox is in my back yard trying to get at the chicks if you want to try and get a picture of it!"

I woke my son up and told him to watch the baby so I could try and get a picture of the fox. Sure enough, there it was next door jumping up at the chicks who were in an elevated cage.

How about some breakfast?
Did I just hear something?

Uh oh!

I'm outta here!

Anybody there?
Oh yeah! There you are!

Hasta la vista, Baby!