Prowl and Pounce

A meditation on rights and responsibilities for the common good. Also, foxes.

Unsplash: Nathan Anderson

“You’re into foxes lately.” My teenager is right. Who couldn’t use a little animal obsession these days, and why not that long, pointed snout made for plunge-and-bite? The wily mind that knows where to find its food. Besides, how ruddy the colorings on the edited Instagram photos I heart heart heart, the eyes wise and clear, and the deceptively delicate legs encased in shoulder-length black gloves, fussy for a creature who has trademarked the crafty prowl.

Once, driving home from babysitting a neighbor’s children, I saw a fox. The headlights picked out its tail, bushy, rust-and-black, for a half second before it leaped into the shadows beyond someone’s grassy, mown yard. The hour was midnight, and I felt like I’d seen something magic, except its opposite. Why shouldn’t the fox be out here in a county development surrounded by trees? The question I mean is, Why all the people? Why the roads where forest used to be? Why the grassy lawn?

At the library this week, I urge my teenager to make her request at the reception desk. “It’s a project on…” I prompt, and she stammers, “The Fish and Wildlife Service.” Two extra librarians appear from nowhere and the three of them conduct mad computer searches, trail their fingers purposefully along book spines in the animal biology section. When they find a resource, they pounce: a history of national parks, a treatise on conservation. One insists we consider John Muir, not Theodore Roosevelt. “The president gets all the credit,” he scoffs.

He’s right, but the FWS is a government institution, and it’s important to follow the congressional acts and laws, I try to explain, because I’ve been wondering if I should tell my daughter that when she gives her presentation in March, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service might’ve been axed, even though it was created not only for the good of wildlife, but also, primarily, for the sustenance of the people, and access to food is a human right–it’s in our constitution–and what will become not only of the wolves in Yellowstone and our own backyard foxes, but also our very bodily selves if the right to eat and the responsibility to care aren’t expectations we hold for everyone, for everyone? The fox turns tail in my periphery, dismissive.

But we were built for this, right? Humans. To see the need. Wise eyes. The crafty prowl and pounce not for what’s selfish and bad, but for what’s communal and good. Right?

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