This fox heard the camera click - the next frame, taken a fraction of a second later, showed simply a motion blur in the far right corner.
I had cause to ponder this image as i worked clearing fallen trees near my stream, and heard a fox calling.
I love the old
practice of associating a child with an animal and bird: with their skills and
faults. My own association with the dingo/wolf came late and I am still
adjusting to it.
I used to have a
negative view of foxes. One day, years ago, hunting wild boars in the
wilds of Wee Jasper, I stumbled upon a fox and her cubs, playing on a bank
beneath an old waterfall. I spent the rest of the day watching them
playing in the sun.
Since then I have
not had the heart to take up arms against the Fox.
Although their
frequent breaches of my Truce has sorely tempted me.
3 comments:
You hunt wild boars? You mean to kill?
It was a long time ago, when i lived up on the dingo fence near a remote trading post called Wee Jasper. A boar was killing lambing ewes and i was asked to try and scare it aware from the mothers. In retrospect it was a dangerous and foolhardy venture, boars are unpredictable and easily a match for person in close terrain. As it turned out, the boar was long gone, and the day ended high in the mountains at a bilabong with a waterfall at one end.
It has been a long time since i traded guns for cameras and my boomerang, and i do not regret the exchange. I am reminded of the almost-congruity in Pliny's exchange with the historian Tacitus:
"To CORNELIUS TACITUS
You will laugh (and you are quite welcome) when I tell you that your old
acquaintance is turned sportsman, and has taken three noble boars.
"What!" you exclaim, "Pliny!"--Even he. However, I indulged at the same
time my beloved inactivity; and, whilst I sat at my nets, you would have
found me, not with boar spear or javelin, but pencil and tablet, by my
side. I mused and wrote, being determined to return, if with all my
hands empty, at least with my memorandums full. Believe me, this way of
studying is not to be despised: it is wonderful how the mind is stirred
and quickened into activity by brisk bodily exercise. There is
something, too, in the solemnity of the venerable woods with which one
is surrounded, together with that profound silence which is observed on
these occasions, that forcibly disposes the mind to meditation. So for
the future, let me advise you, whenever you hunt, to take your tablets
along with you, as well as your basket and bottle, for be assured you
will find Minerva no less fond of traversing the hills than Diana.
Farewell.
:) Thank you. I knew it could not have been a hunt for the kill. Not you. I'm glad these days you only hunt with a camera. And share the bounty with the world.
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