Rest in peace, one of the foxes
December 13, 2025
Today during a playdate for my daughter and a neighbor's daughter, I learned that one of the foxes in the neighborhood met a grim death over the summer. Apparently, the previous owners of their house, which they had just moved in to, had Christmas lights strung up year-round on a tree in their backyard. They came home to see the body of a fox part way up the tree dangling from the wires. She did not go into too many details, but I'm guessing it got the wires caught around its neck and was hung by them. What an awful, absolutely terrible and bullshit way to die. I'm sorry you went like this, fox. I wonder if you were the one that I'd seen so often in our backyard, and that was comfortable with my presence - the one I filmed pulling food out of our compost bin while I sat weeding or doing something in the vegetable garden less than 10 feet away. Or the one I saw be skeptical of a minivan. Or the one that was curious about me, which, I think, was the same one that was also curious about my work on the vegetable garden. Even if you weren't one I'd ever seen before, I'm still sad, and wish you hadn't died a needless death.
I've never decorated the outside with lights - mainly because I have no interest in people thinking I'm Christian and I've only lived in my house a few years - and now I have a new reason not to. It also makes me wonder how many animals are killed by this wasteful cultural practice.