The Good, The Bad, and Me

 

Today we kept Leo, the neighbor’s dog for a few hours.  Once when I was taking him to the back yard we were walking down the stairs from the deck when I saw in our other neighbor’s back yard a big fox.  I froze.  Apparently, the fox saw me at the same moment and froze also, with one front paw in mid-air. 

It reminded me of just before the shootout scene in THE GOOD, BAD, AND UGLY with me probably being the Ugly.

The fox appeared to be bigger than I remember the last fox I saw a couple weeks ago.  It also had a couple of large dark splotches on his side.

Then the fox broke into a run and ran through the bars of a gate on out of sight. 

Not over a minute or two later I heard a gunshot from the direction it ran.  I read someplace you should not shoot them, they are our friends, they eat rodents and other pests. 

I remember many years ago it was legal to shoot foxes and by all means kill them.  Then you had to cut off their ears as proof for the bounty reward.  You would present the departed ears to the Sheriff’s office.  My friend George Hobby shot one and cut off its ears.  He backed down from claiming the bounty because he shot the fox on Kennesaw Mountain, which would have been illegal anyway.