Fox

I saw him in my little scrap patch under the powerline -- a block or two long and five long -- a culvert on one side, a strip mall behind it, our condo complex on the other side. Old willows and young birches and sumac. It's a "habitat naturalization area. do not mow." Bottles and windblown trash. I see rabbits here and have seen raccoon tracks. Smell skunk when the air is damp. Once I watched a big snapper nosing and levering its way up the tea-coloured stream. But I've never anything bigger.

The fox from a distance is not much bigger than a big cat, and is almost lost in last year's sepia grass. But he moves nothing like a cat. He cuts up the slope in a quick straight trot.

The rain has just stopped. An odd smell hangs in the air.