Essays
Wild On The Prairie: Mammals
Being neighbors to a gray fox
December 1, 2002
Deborah has named the fox that sleeps on top of what she calls Burr’s Cantina (our outside grill area). “We should call him Magoosh. After all, he has the same bravura, chutzpah, and savoir-faire of our late beloved roadrunner.” I had to cogitate on the idea for a little while, and decided that I liked the thought that the unique spirit of the roadrunner was reborn in the fox. As emissaries from the wild, the two have drawn us closer to the natural world, opening our eyes to the subtle uniquenesses of their species.
A similar spirit was possessed by Magoosh, the man. Magoosh, a Lipan Apache, was a remarkable person who spoke English, Spanish, and several Indian languages. He helped the early settler, Ma’am Jones, and her family on the Pecos River, as well as other settlers along the Hondo up near Ruidoso. Magoosh was friends with Mosteñeros, Ciboleros, and Comancheros, and even worked out a treaty with Mow-way, the Comanche. Along with his uncle Flacco, he scouted for Captain Jack Hays and other early defenders of the Texas Republic. He was the type of person who caused those that met him to break free of the restraints of stereotype and expectation, and to see his people as human beings with the foibles and frailties common to all.
One foggy, fall morning I stayed home in bed, suffering from serious sinus congestion. Deborah called from work to check up on me and I sat on the bed looking out the window as we chatted. My whiny complaints were interrupted (to Deborah’s great relief) when Magoosh appeared along the trail next to the pond. He stood under the Chisos Weeping Junipers, perfectly motionless except for the forward twitching of his ears, while his eyes were fixed intently on something at the edge of the open water. For a brief moment his hindquarters tensed, but then his head whipped around as two more foxes came trotting into view.
I began a play-by-play report of the foxes’ actions for Deborah. “Magoosh looks like he is a little miffed – the other two are walking to the edge of the pond, but he is walking all stiff-legged down the trail to the big Mother-in-Law Tongue Prickly Pear. The other two got a drink, and now one is butting the other with its head – and that one just knelt down like a puppy wanting to play. Whoa! I guess Magoosh must have barked, because they suddenly looked toward him and immediately trotted in his direction. One stopped to explore the flagstone garden on the north edge of the pond, nose down." I took a deep breath and continued.
"The other is coming toward Magoosh, who is trotting down the trail behind the Aromatic Sumac, so I cannot see him. Now I see him again – he stopped at the junction to the Tickle-Tongue row, and now the other has caught up, and both are looking back at the one nudging the Marsh Fleabane Daisies and sticking its paw under a clump of the Evergreen Carex. I guess that one didn’t find anything, because now he is heading toward the others. Oh – wow!… each one is heading through the Jujube thicket, and they are spread out like a hunter’s beating-line – I bet they are trying to flush out those little cottontails that live there. I swear they are hunting as a team – Oh, dang – I can’t see them anymore!”
Deborah and I try to walk at least some of the trails of the Gone Native Arboretum once a day. One evening, we and Boy and Mindy (our two male cats) were hanging out at the western edge of the planted area after the sun had gone down. We had been enjoying a gloriously enthralling sunset and all of the clouds had just turned the final crepuscular purple. The cats were stationed in their standard guard positions – one on each side of us, facing opposite directions.
Suddenly two foxes, unaware of our presence, trotted up next to where we were sitting. We (cats, foxes and humans) all froze and looked at each other in amazement. Finally one of the foxes (presumably Magoosh) broke our transfixion by moving gingerly forward another ten feet or so. The second more-timid fox continued to stare at Boy. Boy began to edge closer, eyeball-to-eyeball, in a somewhat menacing way, and the frightened fox finally broke away and ran to its partner. Then they both continued on along a trail lined with three-foot-tall Holy Sage and five-foot-tall Smooth Sumac.
A few nights later Deborah, Boy, and I were walking the perimeter trail along the Tall Grass and Large-Pad Prickly Pear windbreak. Boy was lagging behind, as always, stopping to sniff at specific clumps of Broomweed or Doveweed. Deborah and I had tired of stopping to call him and headed back to the house across the open pasture. At the tree line of the Arboretum, I turned just in time to see Boy running at top speed with Magoosh keeping pace a few feet behind.
I fussed at the fox. “Hey, that’s not proper! Quit that! Leave that cat alone! Hey, you silly fox! Boy is going to slash your nose!” Magoosh broke off the chase and stopped to stare at me. Being a little perturbed, I kept talking and walking toward him. When I got within twenty feet he headed off. I followed him for a hundred yards, fussing at him all the way. Mindy joined me, and followed him another hundred feet after I had finished before sitting down to wait and watch to make sure the fox would keep going.
On October 27th twenty friends joined us for pumpkin-carving, apple bobbing, and piñata whacking in Burr’s Cantina (I’ve got to do something about that name! – how about Cantina de los Llaneros?). Magoosh spent most of that time thirty feet away, sleeping underneath the trailing Fortunata Rose or behind the sweet, white blooms of the Beebrush that stick up through the roof of the shade structure. He got down twice during the festivities, unconcernedly walking the length of the roof in plain view, and then leaping to the Golden-ball Leadtree to make his way to the ground.