Saturday, September 29, 2007

A Quiet Suburban Morning

Coming back from Starbucks and the garden: a beautiful early fall day, temp in the 60's, clear blue sky, sun dappling the woods.

(An aside--is it just me or is the "dappling effect" more pronounced in the fall. I'd speculate that the trees grow to intercept the maximum sunlight, which means during the summer. As the sun gets lower in the sky in the autumn, its rays come in at a greater angle, thus finding gaps in the leaf coverage that weren't present when the rays were coming more perpendicular. (That's me, always wanting to have an answer and show it off.))

Suddenly an animal dashed across Glade Drive, coming from the condo cluster on the right to the houses on the left. About halfway across the street, I identified it: a fox. A skinny fox, running faster and more intelligently than the squirrels who often cross the roads, sometimes only partway.

The fox ran to the edge of the backyard of the house on the corner--it backs to a patch of woods running up to the community swimming pool and which separates my townhouse cluster from the streets of houses. For some reason the house's owners have a faux outhouse standing at the edge of the lawn, yuppie humor I guess. The outhouse was in the sun and the fox settled there.

And the fox scratched. And scratched. And scratched.

I must have stood watching for 5 minutes as the fox tried to conquer his fleas. I guess his paws were ineffective weapons against his enemies.

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