Outfoxed by a Fox

"Only the sharpest eye, the keenest nose,
the quickest ear and fleetest toes
can ever outfox the fox!"
~Danny Kaye

Brad and I took the kids to a place called Little Sahara last Friday and camped overnight. Little Sahara is exactly what it sounds like-- a miniature version of the Sahara desert, only it's located in central Utah. It's basically all sand dunes with sagebrush and a few juniper trees here and there. The kids love it cause it's like a great big 60,000 acre sand box they can play in. Lizzy did very well, too. I was nervous about taking her so young, but we decided to do it anyway, and I'm glad we did. We built a campfire Friday night and roasted marshmellows. The children enjoyed staying up late, eating s'mores, and digging holes in the sand with flashlights near our tent. Lizzy liked looking at the moon.

Brad and I had a hard time sleeping that night. I silently wished I could fall asleep in our tent as easily as two-month-old Lizzy could, as well as Scott and Emma, but noisy campers, as well as hearing all the noise from various sand dune vehicles, kept me awake and alert. That's when I began to hear other sounds. I heard the crinkling sound of plastic and something stirring. I tried to excuse it as the wind hitting the plastic bags on our table and the faint crackling of fire still left in our fire pit. Then I heard something more distinguishable: the sound of something hitting the ground with too much force to be the wind. I sat up immediately, worried that an intruder was in our campsite. Brad felt my motion and sat up on our air-mattress, too. I told him I heard noises and that I was worried that someone might be in our campsite. I also told him that I foolishly left the baby's diaper bag on the table and I was afraid my wallet would get stolen.

Brad got up out of bed and went outside our tent, leaving the flap of the tent open slightly. He walked around the tent and told me he didn't see anyone nearby. He grabbed the diaper bag from off the table and sat it down gently inside the tent next to our sleeping baby. "I think I'll stay out for a few minutes," he told me, then left and began walking around our campsite. I stared out the door of the tent with sleepy eyes, feeling a little relieved that Brad had seen nobody near our campsite. I felt my mind getting sleepier by the minute, but kept staring out of the tent door, into the night shadows made by the moonlight.

Then I saw something move. I could barely make out a silhouette of a medium sized animal sniffing the ground a few yards away. My mind woke up in a flash and I instantly grabbed the flashlight next to my pillow and turned it on in the direction I saw the creature. There was nothing there but a small sagebrush bush and no movement to be seen. Did I imagine it?

The next morning I awoke from a long night of going in and out of sleep. It was about 5:45 and a faint bit of light was shinning softly into our tent. Baby Lizzy was stirring and grunting in her blankets, so I knew I only had a limited amount of time to go to the bathroom before she began crying for food. I quickly rushed out the tent and walked toward the bathroom, sneaking by the quiet tents of our loud, nocturnal neighbors.

As I was returning to the campsite, I glanced in the direction of the sand dunes, and to my amazement, spotted a small dog-like animal trotting along the dunes. I took a closer look and realized it was a gray fox. He was only a few yards away from me, glancing in my direction as he weaved gracefully and smoothly in and out of the dunes. I watched until he was out of site.

A few moments later I began searching the campsite for footprints in the sand. I saw my footprints, Brad's footprints, Scott's and Emma's footprints, and even tiny little beetle footprints around the tent, but no paw prints right off. Then I saw evidence of the intruder! Lying next to our wooden table was an empty marshmellow bag-- a bag that was nearly completely full the night before. On closer inspection, I noticed a second hole in the bottom of the bag and a small puddle of yellow liquid on the plastic and the sand. Apparently, the fox had dragged a bag of marshmellows off our table, tore a second hole in it, ate what was left inside, then peed on it and ran away. Sneaky little theif! He made it perfectly clear who that bag of marshmellows really belonged to, and it wasn't us.