But I liked foxes before that band from Norway

The first time I can remember seeing a fox was when I was spending a summer in London staying with a friend. He lived in a small suburb in the southeastern part of the city. There were three of us—my friend, another friend of ours, and myself—staying in the guest room on the second floor of his house, overlooking the street. We were awoken sometime around 1am or so by a rustling outside. It was my other friend who heard it first and he acted as excited as a small child on Christmas morning. There were three foxes outside running through the streets and going through the neighborhood’s trash and recycling. I was very confused when my friends told me to look at the foxes outside. I couldn’t figure out why there would be foxes in the middle of a city. I thought foxes lived in forests or in the arctic—not cities. But in England, foxes live wherever they please.

The foxes in London aren’t the red foxes you generally think of—they’re a little smaller and grey. They’re England’s equivalent to the raccoons of Ohio, scavenging through the most easily-accessible of trashcans for whatever left-behind scraps for dinner. And like with raccoons and some birds of prey, they roam the city because it was their home long before the likes of Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf. Although London is one of the oldest cities in the world, the modern city we know used to be much smaller with a lot more forests—though even now it is one of the greenest cities in the world. As civilization expanded, the foxes stayed put, adapting to their new urban environment, not giving up or into mankind’s supreme domination. Instead, creating a new way of life.

Foxes are an inspiration.

I remember when I lived in London for three months in 2008, I was out walking one day in, I think, a business district near Euston Station and in the middle of the sidewalk right at the very edge of a walkway to an office building was a fox. A dead fox. It was bloated and probably had a few flies around, though I don’t recall it smelling. Clearly, it had been there for a while. I remember stopping and staring at it briefly before continuing on my walk, wondering why it was still there. Although it wasn’t squished or even at all bloody, I assumed it had been hit by a car and the 20’ from the road to its final resting place was all the further the fox could make it. I couldn’t figure out why it was still there though—why no one either from the city or from the building, the walkway of which was being intruded upon by the fox, had removed it yet. It was as if I was the only one who could see it. Maybe that’s how the fox wanted to go out.

A few weeks ago I saw a fox dead in the middle of the road. For the longest time I never even knew that foxes were native to Ohio until a couple years ago when I had one run out in front of me one evening as my friend and I were driving to a restaurant in a nearby city for dinner. That fox managed to not get hit by either my car or the one coming from the opposite direction. This fox I saw a couple weeks ago, however, was not as lucky.

I really like foxes. I think they’re beautiful creatures—majestic even. They hold great significance to me. When the fox ran into the road and dodged both oncoming cars, that, to me, was a sign that even though absolutely nothing in my world seemed to be right, it would all be okay eventually. So when I saw the dead fox in the middle of the fox a few backs, I wondered if that too were a sign. And if it was, what did it mean? With unemployment and the job hunt still looming, I didn’t like the implications of that sign. However, my mind was put at ease not long after.

As I drove home from my favorite pizza local pizza place, Firehouse Pizza, the other night right at dusk, I noticed two animals playing in someone’s driveway. I saw pointy ears and tails, so I assumed they were cats. But as I drove by, they stopped playing and looked at me—they were foxes. Younger foxes, I assumed, who were enjoying each other’s company by wrestling around as the sun started to fade away. And I smiled, happy to see these creatures enjoying themselves.