I didn't realize that foxes ate sunflower seeds. This year, I've switched from generic bird seed to strictly sunflower seeds in my feeders, which hold a total of about 15 pounds of seeds. Flocks of birds visit, and many birds throw dozens of seeds from the feeder in one motion. It can't just be accidental, and it's as if they are distributing them to the rest of the flock.

 

    The end result is a large amount of sunflower seed upon the ground, and that's where most of the birds eat the seed. This also includes squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, skunks, and now even foxes, which really surprises me, being that I spent most of my life in suburban Delaware Valley near Philadelphia, and do not know too much about nature. Actually, I've seen my dogs eat raw carrots, so I guess a hungry fox will snack on anything that is available and edible?

 

    Tonight, I drove the 130 yards up my driveway, and saw a small fox run across my headlights as I approached the garage. I assumed it was hanging around, looking to snack on my cats, the mice, or other animals that hang around my front porch.

     This last year, my cats often seem pretty nervous as they wait for me to let them in, looking to the left and right at any sound, and I assumed that foxes were some of the predators they were worrying about.

 

    A few hours later, I was talking to a friend on the telephone, and looked out, to see this LARGER fox, picking over the sunflower seeds on the ground. I had time to grab my FLIP ULTRA II video camera (which is the size of a McDonalds Hash Brown Potato), and get this shot. I was really surprised.

 

    In fact, I'm wondering if this is a family of foxes, with the young still hanging with the parents, as this fox in the video is definitely much larger than the tiny one I saw running across my headlights as I drove up to the garage.

 

    I had just been out to the woods about ten miles from here for a night walk, and to be honest, it was DEAD QUIET. I had hoped to hear a female moose bellowing for a mate, as I did last year, but no sound whatsoever.

 

    Last year, a hunter with a COW MOOSE HUNTING PERMIT had seen me every day at dusk, during hunting season, as he searched for his prize. On the last day he drove out at nightfall, and about 15 minutes after he left, a cow moose started bellowing for minutes at a time, about a quarter mile away, in the woods. This went on for several days, and I couldn't help but laugh at the irony of the whole thing.

 

    In fact, I recorded the cow moose sound on my old Olympus digital camera, but lost most of my videos and pictures in a series of several computer crashes, where I was not wise enough to do regular backup. To hear a cow moose bellow for a mate in a quiet woods is quite a lovely sound.

 

    After living up here for six years, you tend to take the black, night sky, and the silences, for granted. The bright band of the Milky Way no longer fills me with WONDER, as it did when I first moved up here. Now, I am far more likely to be impressed by the bright lights of the Bangor Mall, 95 miles south of here....LOL...LOL

    I must say that the isolation, nature, and the silent, night sky you find along the Canadian border in Maine still has a lyrical song to it. Soon, we will be inundated with a few feet of snow, and below zero temperatures, with large heating bills, and we will all pay for our golden existence.