Fox

On my way home from the studio today, I saw a roadkill fox, right on the dotted line for the left turn lane. I pulled up into the turn lane on 29, backed up with hazards on and retrieved it. Got some looks from a bunch of workers in a truck that said "Spanish American Contractors" on the side. I had a few plastic bags to contain the small amount of blood around his head and threw him in the back right next to the air compressor.
See the Deer rack in the background? That was last year's biggest roadkill score; a rail road track-kill actually. It reminds me how this is such a much nicer time of year for roadkill collecting than July. No stink, no flies, no maggots; a much more enjoyable experience by leaps and bounds. Harvesting the buck head was worth it, but gross. I smelled him for months before I could get him, all the time worried someone would beat me to it. As it turns out, I don't think I have a whole lot of competition, at least not in Charlotte.

Poor little guy had a compound fracture on his left front leg. And even though he had to have been hit last night or early this morning and I found him around 2:45 PM, he felt almost warm in the armpits. It's been in the high forties today.

Is there anything prettier than a fox tail?
Finding this fox brought up all kinds of fox memories, like the time I was driving with Dad out at the Farm and we found one in the road and stopped to collect it. That one had been shot, so we deduced he had either ran into the road from the woods with a fatal bullet wound, or more likely had fallen out of the hunter's truck on his way home from the hunt. Either way, it was finders keepers losers weepers. I watched Dad skin him behind the house, where I'd watched him clean so many fish and skin various other critters, enthralled in every one as kids always are. The skin is on there good, held strong by the fascia and you have to peel & pull & cut over & over. Critters without their skins are very fearsome looking. They got taken to the pond & dumped in for the snapping turtles to eat, but this one's getting buried in horse manure to clean every last bone for art purposes later.
When I was a teenager, I saw a fox die in broad daylight. It was one of the strangest things I've ever witnessed.
Me, Brandi and Dad went for a horse ride, our two golden retrievers followed the horses and the two cats trotted along too, a regular parade. Our favorite destination was "Pasture Number One", adjoining the very back of our property; very hilly and picturesque with woods all around, a small pond and a lone tree on the far end up a hill we would always gallop to. We had hauled ass to the tree, where we'd sit and let the horses graze, enjoying a good stare and exchanging deep thoughts, and were on our way down to the dam side of the pond when we spied a fox. He was out for a stroll right in the middle of the day time, right in front of three humans, three horses, two dogs and two cats.
He was walking in our general direction, not really towards us particularly. And then he did the strangest thing, he walked right into the pond. Brandi & I got real alarmed and asked Dad all kinds of questions. The fox went in deep enough where he couldn't touch with his feet and started swimming, swam in a circle. He just kept swimming in that circle, around and around. Dad explained that he had probably been poisoned from the turkey houses that were not 100 yards away, and that poisoning is a chicken shit way to kill an animal, but turkey farmers would do it out of necessity. Once poisoned, animals will get very thirsty and also kind of go crazy. I urged Dad to go home and get a gun to shoot him, but he said the fox would drown before he got back, which he promptly did right there while we were talking.
I think getting run over is the much better way to go.
Waste not want not I say! I am excited to skin him, and trying to decide whether to put him in the fridge until next week, or to take him to the studio and skin him there tomorrow or this weekend? I'm going to be there for the next three days, so I need to make a decision.
I already know what we'll use him for. Bran & I are already collaborating on the project. It was perfect timing.
Very few things really make me happier than a good roadkill blessing!
You've got to appreciate what's important and "know what's good."