marty forgot the camera again but he was very sorry especially since there aren't two baby foxes, there are three! he has been pocketing his camera faithfully since. and he found this photo to tide me over. he's really into the kits and did a little research:
I've been reading all about "canids" since we have a family in the neighborhood. This morning at dawn (foxes are crepuscular, which means they're active at dawn and twilight), the fox mom stared at Francie and me as we went by. Then the kits flew across the street towards her. The two who act like twins and are always together disappeared with the mom. The odd one, who is bigger and slower, lost track of where they had gone. So he (I'm sure, somehow, he's male) just good-naturally sat down on the lawn across the street and watched us.
They are the talk of the village. Especially how the arrival of the famille de renards has coincided with a drop in the goose census...no one mourns...
well, i do. i mean i agree there are a lot of geese, and i'd like more ducks. but i don't think there's too many geese here, just plenty. they are variously elegant, obnoxious, cranky and amusing, but aren't we all?
with three baby foxes, an additional name had to be found, so now it's kip, kit and kaboodle. i've always liked the name kip. i knew a kip in high school, from my church's youth group, an affable space cadet like the third kit marty describes. one night when we were being paid to usher for "gone with the wind" in the '60's - it was such a big deal then, there was reserved seating - kip nearly started a riot in the theatre when, for half an hour as he was collecting tickets, he told our patrons they could sit anywhere they wanted. this made those with less desirable seats delighted and not at all interested in moving when the rightful "owners" came along. especially since kip hadn't torn their tickets in half and they had no clue where else to go.
i was head usher that night and the manager was nearly apoplectic. still no matter how hard i tried to be all apologetic and polite, i just couldn't stop laughing - all that umbrage caused by kip's sweet, carefree ditziness somehow made me feel indulgent towards him rather than peeved. i remember us getting in a lot of trouble but not the getting fired type, more like the ferris bueller kind, where the adolescents know very well who prevailed.
