I think of foxes --

of Darwin, who took his walks so early, he met the foxes coming home, and each passed in silence, tolerant of the other's curious habits, of a neighbor, who freed a fox caught in a trap and the fox, who in his headlong flight to safety, stopped once to look back, his eyes acknowledging his thanks; of a story in the news of a hunt brought to an unscheduled close: the quarry sitting on the tracks as the train bore down, then bounding off unhurt eluding the pursuing hounds and of a friend who found that a vixen and her young were living beneath her deck. They were quiet tenants, sleeping by day, leaving at dusk to go hunting, the mother in the lead, her three kits following in single file. Now, when she turns the news on in early morning, she remembers four pairs of eyes at the glass door, no doubt indignant at having sleep disturbed -- and thinks of foxes.