We have been having some light predator problems again. Most mornings we have a fox that comes onto our property and scares the birds and tries to make off with a bird or two. We have lost a few ducks and Zuzu is just getting too old to keep a spry fox out of the birds.
So I decided I need to take care of this problem.
I got up before dawn, made a small pot of coffee and out one of the guns. It has been warm lately so I just threw on a sweater and headed outside to wait for twilight. The first thing you notice when you are sitting in the predawn morning is the cold. Awaiting my prey I would not tremble, nor talk or whistle, not move in the slightest. And as I sat there in the darkness the cold started to creep in. My legs and hands felt the cold first, then my feet and head, the cool morning with the lack of movement made the cold almost painful. In the initial darkness there was not enough light to see any good target but every motion caught my eye and as the sun reached toward the horizon I could make out more and more of the homestead. Sitting there in the painful cold not moving I started to notice things that I normally overlook. The human world is made-up of straight lines, harsh angles and light. The world of the plants and animals moves in winding paths threw the darkness, even the vocalization of the animals holds at it center a silence in the darkness. This is not our world, not in the twilight, eyes older than our own stalk that in-between world; neither light nor darkness but a world in transition. Our ancestors wisely kept to the caves and the fires until the sun came back to the world and it was safe to venture out, only our tools make us safe in that world between the the light and the darkness. Hours creep buy in the passing of seconds, I don't know how long I have been out here in the frigid blackness all I know it that time is passing. And I wait.
So there I was in the dark and the cold, my rifle cradled in my arms, waiting for my prey to poke his head up. I was protecting my families food, loosing sleep and choosing discomfort over warmth and sleep for them. As the sun nearly crested the hills we had approached the time of the fox. That time in the morning when he would come to kill my animals and leave nothing in return, he comes to take food from my family. With any luck this will be the final time he tries.
But the sun climbs higher in the sky and now it starts to crest the hills. The time of the fox has passed and he chose not to appear. Did he sense that this dawn someone was waiting for him? Can a predator tell at some level we have forgotten about, when he becomes the prey? Did I give away my position in some small way? Or was it none of those and this morning the fox simply wanted to hunt another ground? I don't know, but this morning no shot rang out and no bodies cooled in the morning light. There will be other mornings, and this new game between the fox and I is not over.
Life on the homestead is interlaced with death, sometimes the death of
plants, sometimes the death of our livestock and on some morning soon
the death of a predator.
More early mornings and warm coats, perhaps this next time with a hat.
