Another one from the Highland Wildlife Park archives. This photo, from November 2019, was an opportunistic snapshot as we walked past the snow fox enclosure. I’d actually stopped to tie my shoelace and looked up to see this guy studying me intently. I wonder what he thought I was doing. Perhaps he was just looking for a new friend. Or maybe I looked like an optimistic lunch option.
I awoke to a face-full of snow. Not a promising sign. The last thing I remembered was warming myself by the bonfire where I was burning the last remaining items. Those things that I had neither the energy nor the inclination to pack and move.
Spilled hot chocolate stained the fluffy white ground beside me. I must have fallen asleep while drinking it. I was lucky I hadn’t fallen into the fire. Lucky it hadn’t fallen on me. By the end I was so exhausted there was no building it carefully. The stack of unwanted furniture and my other flammable rejects had stood head-high and it was all I could do to fling the final items into the flames.
I flexed my cold-stiffened muscles, trying to regain some use of them. In the moment I started to lift my head I heard it and froze. A snuffling near my head. I was terrible at judging size from sounds like that. Last summer while camping I’d pattern-matched the nocturnal ramblings of a hedgehog for those of a werewolf. In my defence I knew it wasn’t a werewolf, but my sleep-addled brain refused to offer any other nouns.
Assessed by that standard whatever was sniffing in the snow nearby would be the size of a bear. I tried to think of some less terrifying beast of a similar scale and came up with nothing.
The sniffing intensified. This was it. Sleeping in the snow hadn’t done for me, so nature was finishing the job with tooth and claw.
Panic flooded me, providing an urgency that I’d failed to find last night. I lurched up and backward. First to my knees and then my feet. Fight or flight surged through my veins and I readied myself to make a stand or a sharp exit as new information demanded.
The snuffling something proved to be a small arctic fox. It danced backward, scattering snowflakes everywhere like the plastic flecks in a snow-globe. The fox’s mouth lifted in an entirely non-threatening manner. It snorted twice and I was sure I could see laughter in its eyes.
“Hello,” I croaked. The night had not been kind to my voice.
The fox crouched its front half, leaving its hindquarters and tail in the air. It yipped it eerie-strange bark and jumped excitedly. The sound echoed weirdly from the outbuildings around me.
While I was still reeling at the oddness, the fox darted past me. It came so close to my legs that it brushed off some of the snow that had stuck to my trousers. It trotted up to the edge of the fire, grabbed something from the embers, and dragged it back through the snow.
A pheasant. Thoroughly dead and quite charred. The feathers had been ripped off rather than burned away. Had this curious beastie cooked me breakfast?
The fox sat expectantly by its prize. Its head flicked up to me and back to the food. Back to me again. Its great brush of a tail scudded back and forth in the snow, filling the air with a cloud of dry white ice that hung in the still air.
I hunkered down and pulled off a drumstick. The meat cooked through but deliciously moist. I threw it my new friend before pulling off the other to eat myself.
The fox needed no further invitation. It gulped down the meat then started in on the bone. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. I know you’re not supposed to let dogs eat chicken bones. On the other hand, the evidence suggested that this fox was significantly more capable than I was right then.
I ate the delicious meat and considered my situation. The fox sat companionably by my side. We both stared past the leftovers of the bonfire. The remains of my old life. I wondered what was next for me. I looked at the fox and he looked right back at me. Perhaps whatever was coming, I wouldn’t meet it alone.
Brandon Lim 