“Where’s Waldo!” First off, let me apologize for the photo quality, I took these with my crappy phone, and secondly, I didn’t want to get any closer as I had my walking companions with me. I suck at finding wildlife. Over the years I have been very frustrated when driving with my spouse as he will say something like “Wow, was that ever an impressive Moose back there…” or “that was cool, a wolf and her pup.” Of course, I missed it! We will be out walking and he will say look at that gorgeous Red Cardinal and I am looking frantically for just a glimpse, but never see it. I was walking through the park with Mattie and Pud and they stopped to have a vigourous sniff of a grassy area. As I patiently waited for them to get there fill I realized there was my friend the fox…and was she ever close! The two of us stared at each other, I thought she would take off or Mattie would start to bark. To my surprise, the dogs were so intent on trying to pick up the scent of something (ah, that would be the fox that is 10 metres ahead of us) they were oblivious. She decided to then squat down on the path and have a little bath in the sunshine. I kept looking from her to the dogs, she knew they were there but they had no clue. Finally after standing there for a couple of minutes I gingerly pulled my cell out of my back pack, moving ever so slowly as not to alert the dogs to her presence. Of course as I get to the screen to take the shot, she got camera shy and darted off across the field. The dogs still completely out of the loop that a distant cousin was checking them out. When I got home and looked at the photos I had taken, at first I thought I had somehow managed not to capture her image at all, but with that neat little feature where you keep zooming in, I finally located her! She wasn’t a figure of my imagination, I had really seen her and I had proof! As for Mattie and Pud, I finally urged them to continue walking, and as we exited the park their noses were working over time, as they smelled something intriguing. I couldn’t help but feel thrilled that I saw what they were looking for, me, the person who never finds Waldo! I totally get that idiom “Sly like a fox” . Although, she was being rather overt when she started bathing herself, like “hey guys, over here, how much more obvious can I be?” For once in my life it was me saying, “You know guys, that’s a fox you have detected and I would just like you to know, I saw her!”
No Time To Paws 