Foxy Lady

Red fox photo by Louis-Etienne Foy on Unsplash, 2020

She looks harried and not as fancy as her red-coat lover with his black boots, but pound for pound, she is fierce. Now that she has kits, she’s defending her section of the street like she holds title to it. If her lover still drops by with morsels, I haven’t seen him, but foxes are monogamous, so probably.

She stood her ground in a neighbor’s front yard and screamed at us when we passed few days ago. Layla said she just wanted to give her a friendly nuzzle—she means well.

On last Saturday’s walk, I heard the kits yelping for the first time. Then saw a head poking above the grass in the culvert. The neighbors on the street have counted three kits in total. The entire neighborhood is engaged at this point. “Slow down!” The small fox family has on its side no less than a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates.  

The little vixen didn’t confront us Saturday, but I saw her peering from the bushes keeping a close eye on Layla. One kit, close to the road, was mostly curious. Layla had been smelling ‘fox’ for a while, but I didn’t point out the one beneath the bushes nor the kit. The last few days the vixen has been tracking us coming past, dodging behind bushes, skirting the open lawns and on under other bushes. All she wants is for us to get the hell home. Wildlife making do in suburbia.

Of course, Layla will have none of it, staring down her smaller distant cousin. But the mother fox shows no fear in her eyes. This is a standoff that goes back longer than either has been alive—generations longer than I’ve been alive—long as the first canines stalked an old land bridge entering a new world.

They say wolves came over once from Eurasia via the Bering land bridge, retreated and came again. The Indians with their domesticates—aka huskies—followed suite; foxes took much the same route. Siberia was an icy morgue none wanted to live in.

“Red foxes are usually together in pairs or small groups consisting of families, such as a mated pair and their young, or a male with several females having kinship ties. The young of the mated pair remain with their parents to assist in caring for new kits. The species primarily feeds on small rodents, though it may also target rabbits, game birds, reptiles, invertebrates and young ungulates. Fruit and vegetable matter is also eaten sometimes. Although the red fox tends to kill smaller predators, including other fox species, it is vulnerable to attack from larger predators, such as wolves, coyotes, golden jackals and medium- and large-sized felines. [what, no huskies?] “The species has a long history of association with humans, having been extensively hunted as a pest and furbearer for many centuries, as well as being represented in human folklore and mythology. Because of its widespread distribution and large population, the red fox is one of the most important furbearing animals harvested for the fur trade. Too small to pose a threat to humans, it has extensively benefited from the presence of human habitation, and has successfully colonized many suburban and urban areas. Domestication of the red fox is also underway in Russia, and has resulted in the domesticated red fox.”

from Wikipedia article on the Red Fox

Back in the ‘good old days,’ the European colonists who could afford it enjoyed ‘riding to the hounds,’ otherwise known as hounding 12-15 pound creatures to death. Good times. It strikes me as something evil to train one species of canine to run down another, particularly when you’re sitting your fat ass on a horse. That’s a sport?

The North American fox population survived because they had the rest of the country, and the Native Americans respected foxes for their elder wisdom.

“Wisaka [fox] is the benevolent culture hero of the prairie Algonquian tribes (sometimes referred to as a "transformer" by folklorists.) His name is spelled so many different ways partially because these tribes speak several different languages, and partially because they were originally unwritten (so English speakers just spelled it however it sounded to them at the time). Wisaka is a trickster character whose adventures are often humorous. Unlike Plains Indian tricksters, Wisaka is usually portrayed as a good friend of humankind, not a dangerous or destructive being.

“The details of Wisaka's life vary somewhat from community to community. Most often he is said to have been directly created by the Great Spirit. (Some Kickapoo communities in Mexico identify Wisaka as the son of the Great Spirit, though this may be an influence from Christianity.) In other traditions, Wisaka is born of a virgin mother and raised by his Grandmother Earth. In some stories Wisaka is said to have created the first humans out of mud, while in others, the Great Spirit created people modelled on Wisaka, who then became their Elder Brother. In many tribal traditions, Wisaka has a younger brother named Chipiapoos or Yapata, who was killed by water spirits and became the ruler of the dead.”

from Native American Legends: Wisaka website

Human history hasn’t even a lingering conscience. The Idaho legislature just signed a law to resume killing wolves because a hundred-forty or so sheep were killed last year. Not like Idahoans don’t slaughter sheep, but that’s the point—lamb chops taste great and they’ll be damned if they share. Colorado voters just approved the reintroduction of gray wolves—but they have to get past Idaho and Wyoming if they’re coming south.

If some Westerners view Eastern urbanites as woolly-headed romantics—whether that’s a racial slam it’s a slam of some sort—we’d just like to think a few places are left for our brethren creatures. Is that so much to ask? 

In the first winter spent in our present house, the lake froze over end to end, then it snowed. The local dog-fox used the frozen lake as his private highway, and the poem came from it. Brilliant Light  

Thinking about my own mortality the other day produced another:

I don’t remember

Waking to the stir 

leaf by leaf we feel

the light

warming as it feeds

us way above the ground,

so high we know

the wind the old tree

reaching for the sky

tells us is our fate.

Further On Up the Road

Clapton has been pilloried by any number of rock ‘critics.’ He’s not black enough. He doesn’t have the voice to sing the blues. Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. He’s too damn successful for a blues guy is what lies at the heart of it. I’m here to testify, one white boy for another.

I’ve been seeing the boy since the one time in Atlanta he and his two mates were jamming on ‘Crossroads,’ Jack Bruce on walking bass and vocals, Ginger Baker on drums and insanity. And Clapton was lighting the stage with fireworks. I’m not sure any other rock band can go off in three separate simultaneous improvisations, lead, bass and drums like they could, then bring it back together again.

This was late ’68, Clapton was 23, and the gossip was none of them would survive the year at the rate they were burning out. As I entered high at the back of the outdoor amphitheater in Chastain Park, they were three tiny figures on stage with towering speakers stacked behind them. I overheard a disapproving middle age couple tsk tsking, “those three down there are making all that noise?”

Yes ma’am, indeed they are. You could say they were riding a wave—I believe they were leading it.

Google “Cream” and see what shows up on the first results page. For me, the photo of three skinny Brits looking slightly bewildered sit at the top of the page, but Ms. Google knows me by now.

When I was living in Miami, my friend Paul Pergakis did some work for Criteria Studio where Clapton recorded a few tracks on an album by the one hit wonder, Derrick & the Dominoes. Clapton picked up a long haired Georgia boy to help on guitar. For a while, Pergakis was talking about designing a new studio and asked if I wanted in, but it never panned out. Had it come through, I’d just sit in the corner quiet as a mouse and listen.

Our husky, Layla is named for one of Clapton’s love songs.  I suggested we name her Lady on account of her being a proper looking husky lady, and D came back with Layla, so she is. I’ve always preferred that original recording of Layla—if you can’t tell how desperate Clapton was, your hearing aid is turned too low.

Criteria Studio—photo by Ebyabe, 2011

After Cream, Blind Faith, then Derrick & the Dominoes. Clapton nearly died from Patty blowing him off—accompanied by too many drugs, but if that had been it, he’d still be remembered by a bunch of aging Baby Boomers. He probably came close to following Hendrix in those days.

I’ve never considered Clapton’s version of “Cocaine,” JJ Cale’s song, a cautionary tale like it’s hyped to be. And when he plays it in concert, his audience isn’t exactly judicious with the cheering. The only thing cautionary about it is how much it’s loved for the wrong reason.

Clapton has never let his ego keep from playing with other musicians; he’s played with the best since he began, Duane Allman among an arm’s length of others. First time I heard Derrick Trucks, he was a blonde punk with long hair onstage with Clapton at a “Crossroads” music festival in Chicago. His uncle, Butch, was this skinny white boy pounding drums right beside Jaimoe on congas, driving that sound.

A few minutes ago, Further on up the Road was playing on Pandora. This link’s version is part of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz and Clapton’s playing with the Band. Or another more recent one: Further on up the Road with Joe Bonamassa, another white boy who reached the Royal Albert Hall based on other than his family tree.

Presently on Pandora, the Tedeschi Trucks Band is playing “Midnight up in Harlem” and Derrick is crying with his slide like Duane had never been born, and Susan, well she’s just fine sounding. People who think the world ended with the Allman Brothers haven’t heard this orchestra gone live.

Electric blues, rock and jazz, America’s contribution to music, is singular in its improvisation, and its roots are solidly plebeian. The Duke of Earl aside, there are no royals in the bunch. Field hands, sharecroppers and blue collar laborers all, whether from Jackson, Memphis, Chicago—or Surrey. Rock may be American in origin, but seems it migrated back to the old country..

Clapton grew up a Brit, but I’ve never held it against him. After your mother had you at sixteen, she can be confused in a boy’s mind as an older sister. And when she comes over from Canada years later to visit, and she wants nothing to do with you, there’s always a cheap electric guitar you can learn to love. If that’s not the f—ing blues, it’s not much different.

He recorded black brothers’ songs. He learned his life’s work by listening to them. What were you doing at sixteen? He wrote ‘Layla’ not too many years later. By what measure ain’t he black enough? He ain’t been heartbroken enough?

Musicians are misfits and crazies, and do entirely too many drugs and sleep with people they can’t always remember, and I no longer want to become one—too much work. But I don’t think musicians from earlier times were normal either. Sitting on a stool with an instrument—violin or guitar—waiting for lightning or digging it out of yourself—it’s all the same.

Can you even count the licks in a single blues line he’s played?

A close friend of mine thinks Clapton is too commercial. He the man or he the product? Listen to the original recording of ‘Crossroads’ then ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ and we can discuss it.