Today I made friends with fox. I was kicking around my soccer ball in a park when I started to get the feeling someone was staring at me. I turned around and there was this fox standing about a 100 feet from me just staring back. So I ignored him for awhile (that's how you show wild animals they don't need to be scared of you) and kept playing soccer. At some point I missed the net with a shot and the fox took off after the ball. When he caught it he went to bite it and I yelled "heeeyyy!!" at him like I would yell at a dog -- and he backed off. A little while later he wandered away into the parking lot, and a mini-van pulled in. I half expected this to happen (rednecks are so predictable) and the driver lined up the fox and floored it in an attempt to run him over. The fox escaped under the fence while I yelled something intelligent like "Fucking rednecks!" (funny how quickly I'm lowering myself to their level). But the fox then came over to me to hang out in safety. That's when I knew I'd made a friend.

We played a little soccer together after that, had fun chasing the ball and the little bugger started pushing how much he could bite my soccer ball before I chased him away. Then I sat down in the sun and he wandered around me at a safe distance. We made eye contact briefly and I squinted at him and he squinted back. Then he lay down in the sun about 20 feet away from me and we hung out. Nice.