Walking home recently I was suprised by an encounter of sorts with an animal from the wild.
Not so much as an actual encounter as a exchange of glances and mirrored glass look in the abandon of the near wild..
Walking home along the hilly, shrub hewn forest sectioned of the modern day highway, for some reason I was continually focusing my eyes intuitively on the bush and brush as I walked along.
Before long, the chance moment and encounter arrived like a form of magic.
A fox had been sitting and was frozen to the spot and appeared as suddenly as out of the woodwork.
As I saw him (her,it!-lol) , I am pretty sure that a car on the other side of the highway going the opposite direction which I could see with peripheral vision shared my view and glimpse of this rarely spotted animal...
..it left more out of seemed amusement than actual fear and in a instant and a half and flash it was over.
A moment of full disclosure here, as much as I love wildlife and animals domesticated and wild, I am not an expert in the field by any means nor am I a walking encyclopedic fount of knowledge when it comes to initimately knowing and naming the flora and fauna of all of beautiful British Columbia.
But Google was not going to be as breezily adept when it came to researching this mammal as it was for me in the past. First hits all returned company names, advertising,blogs and literal pages with nothing to do with our furry much adored and characterized (i.e. think: foxy lady,fox like,etc) four legged creature.
Eventually using more key words I was able to "ferret" (:)) out more information but still am not sure if the creature I saw was an Artic fox (with summer colors, do they come this far? Could it be a rarer experience than I initially thought?) or just a standard ho-hum everday run of the mill smiling red fox with a brun coat or was it actually a Brown Fox? Is there such a thing as a 'brown fox'?
This is why I am finding Google to be useless in my search. It's on a time like this that you really do wish you could have your Encyclopedia Brittanica.........'handy' as they say.
And not on a compact disc but the proper way and form, a full fledged shelf hogging space consuming raw set of bound compendiums shelved and standing as proud as your best china on display in an antique cabinet.
Ready for instant reference and thumbing through. Truly, thinking about it now, its like the Internet and world wide web without annoying Flash ads, a glaring screen, typing and have to continually stare in the same position, and CTS inducing mouse movements. With a book in lap, and a comfy couch, one can actually read and genuinely relax at the same time.
So in light of all of this, today I thank that fox I saw for his presence of mind (he has enemies) and his wiliness and for his natural fur bearing regality and beauty and for sharing his world even for an ephermal instant with we mostly sentient human beings.
It was truly a rare occurence. Strictly from memory, I do not believe I had ever actually seen one with my own eyes before.
A break from the ordinaire that is a moment to be remembered and somehow cherished.
You see unless you see one, you will never know.
It would be impossible even with the most stretched imagination to set up the scene or catch the same moment on camera: it is simply that type of elusiveness for that which makes the fox so famous.
As I think about it now, perhaps this is why the fox grins and smiles when he sees you because he knows this. Its a flash of whiteness type smile and brief luminescense from dark eyes that go together before he quickly trots off...as if he is walking away with a big secret.
And its hard to find that on Google or probably even an encyclopedia Brittanica.
But it is as if they really do smile.
caffeinated
special
d'oh
Found 
lazy
