The young fox skitters across the yard, angling along the diagonal path that his family has followed for years. He slips between pickets as if they weren’t there. Proof that our yard is a passageway, a corridor between woods and meadow.

How do I know he’s a juvenile? His long, coltish legs give him away. That and his antic energy.

Two weeks ago, I saw two kits in the yard, leaping and playing. Two days ago one of them was limping. These are harsh days for injured animals.

I tell myself he had a clump of ice embedded in his paw, that it melted and he is fine. That he is the very fox I just saw galloping atop the ice-crusted snow.

(Wrong season, wrong fox. This is one of the few fox photos I have on hand. I haven’t snapped a shot of the little guy)