ESTESBOG

(Photograph courtesy of Colorado Division of Wildlife)

by Peter Walker

            I don’t know whether curiosity actually kills cats, but I do know what sort of trouble curiosity once brought to a red fox.

            A Maine Game Warden buddy of mine named Smally Chandler told me about the incident. Smally worked the Camden-Searsport district on the Maine coast during the early 1970s. In those days there was a great deal of night time deer poaching west of the Penobscot estuary and it kept the district wardens in that region very busy.

            Warden Chandler received a tip from a citizen about night hunters working a remote area in one corner of his district. Checking logging roads by daylight, he found tire tracks, empty rifle casings, and other evidence of possible night hunting in a clover-rich clearing at the far end of a long, one-lane dirt road through boreal spruce-fir forest. 

            There was no satisfactory place to hide a vehicle within sight of the clearing or anywhere along the woods road. Smally decided the only way he was going to catch the poachers was to go in and try to ambush the bad guys on foot.

So one clear October night with a full moon rising in the east, Warden Chandler hiked up the logging road with a pack on his back. The cloudless sky meant the temperature was going to plummet through the night until it was well below freezing by daybreak. He planned to stay reasonably warm on his stake-out. In his pack was a thermos of hot coffee and a tightly rolled sleeping bag.

The road had been used the year before to haul pulp wood from a fir stand that had been logged off. It crossed a long wooded swamp which would have been a problem if the logger had not built the road bed up a couple of feet with dirt from a barrow ditch along each side.

Warden Chandler set up his vigil by encasing himself in the sleeping bag in an inclined position with his feet toward the bottom of the ditch and his head on a “pillow” of grass and clover at the edge of the road. He was situated so that he had a clear view down the road for more than 200 yards in one direction and the clearing where poaching would presumably take place in the other.

Now came hours and hours of waiting. On this particular night the poachers never showed up. The game warden did his best to remain alert to sound, light, and movement along the silvery roadway while hunkering down in his sleeping bag.

Some time after midnight, with the full moon high overhead, Smally became aware of shadowy movement at the far end of the stretch of road that he lay beside. 

It was not human movement. It was a wild animal and not a particularly big one. As it worked its way closer, the warden could see that it was a red fox methodically checking the weeds first on one side of the road, then the other.

Lying absolutely motionless with only his head sticking out of the bag, the wildlife officer probably looked like nothing more than a log or a shapeless mound in the shadows. The crisp air was motionless.

Gradually the industrious little fox drew very close. Chandler hardly dared to breathe. As the fox checked the opposite road shoulder only 20 feet away, it suddenly lifted its ears and keyed on the man’s head. Perhaps it detected a subtle movement or a faint sound. What was this? Something good to eat?

On full alert the fox stealthily crossed the road toward Smally Chandler, moving cautiously on slender black legs. Closer it tiptoed…closer and closer. Chandler held his breath and the fox very nearly touched him on the nose with its muzzle.

At that moment the man blew air into the fox’s face with a sudden whoosh. The lightning reaction of the startled animal was to jump straight up. Warden Chandler said it appeared as if the animal suddenly levitated several feet, reversed direction in midair and disappeared into the brush across the road without ever coming down again!