Two Cats and a Fox Cross Paths

Twice in the last week a black cat crossed my path.  Fortunately, as the mother of twins, I consider most things that come in twos to be lucky.

The first feline zipped in front of my car on Skunk Lane at 4:48pm on Sunday afternoon as I was headed to the Krupski produce wagon, a place with ample parking and a strategic place to wait for the hand off of my boys from an earlier car pool that went up to a soccer game in Brooklyn.   I don't do games in the boroughs...but luckily all the team dads seem to thrive on the adventure of driving to Coney Island at 7:30 am on a Sunday morning... and then riding The Cyclone to celebrate the victory on the soccer field.  After last Sunday's events,  the kids are all wishing that each game could be played on Stillwell Avenue!

The second black cat ran eastward across Kenney's Road at 8:30 pm on Wednesday as my boys and I left the spot of yet another soccer carpool hand off, this time from our coach's house after a practice in Laurel.

My disregard for potential bad luck that may follow such cat encounters was reinforced as we arrived home after both crossings intact yet hungry.  After all it was suppertime and isn't it always with growing boys? 

Today, on our way to school for morning chorus practice, we witnessed another crossing, one that only a stunning, sly, auburn creature would attempt.  On a causeway shrouded with fog, a gorgeous red fox trotted across the road in front of my car and slowed down ever so slightly at the shoulder as if to acknowledge my approach.  Off through the mist laden marsh went the elusive fox as she hunted for early morning fodder.

Whether she was interested in downing a distracted egret, small green heron or perhaps snatching some of the teeming bunker that were running along the shoreline, leaving behind an oil slick which had filled the morning air with a pungent reminder of our elusive bay and estuaries, I can only surmise.  

Once I dropped the boys at school, I returned and sat at the spot where I first spied the fox's r silky coat.

She had long disappeared into the bogs surrounding the oyster ponds.  I now add her to my list of red fox sightings in Southold Town over the past 17 years. 

The first was of a mother fox bleating a mournful yet distinct call to her errant young.  As she sat in my field not far from my garden shed, she disregarded me as I crept closer to just 40 feet away rapt with her beauty as she repeatedly called up into the air just 50 feet from me.

The second fox I spied was drinking quite publicly in broad daylight from the large puddle that forms on the northern reaches of Albertson's Lane.  Where that precious water came from I do not know.  Our area was in the middle of a severe drought and the Pine Barrens had just experience a flash fire closing down Sunrise Highway near Westhampton as the flames leapt at nearby homes.  

I was also lucky to see a fourth fox back in Bellport when I was quite young.  On a frigid winter night a fox had curled up and hugged its body against the glass in the cellar window well of our house to absorb some of the escaping heat as the furnace chugged away below.  My father covered the well a bit to protect the shivering creature from being cornered by our pet German Shephard.  We could see the body close up from where we stood inside the cellar.  In the morning it was gone.

A damp foggy morning, a fox sighting and some distant memories have begun my day.