The Fox and the Doritos Bag

No, the title of the above is not a children's parable. Rather, it is the story of my Friday night.

When I last left off, on Friday night, I wrote about movie night at the kid's school. I got home and was utterly exhausted; between running (I've been running tons lately), working, travel to LA, etc. I was just wiped out. The wife had to head to the airport to pick up her parents at around 11:oo pm and I went to sleep shortly after the kids.

I woke up (or I should say, I was awoken) at 1:00 am by mass hysteria. Both kids were up, the wife was at home and they were all screaming something about "the creature on the front porch."

Still in deep REM sleep, I looked out the front window, and lo and behold, not but two feet from our front door was some creature with its head nestled in a ... Dorito's bag (not ours, by the way).

The mood inside the house was somewhere between complete bemusement and utter hysteria. I tried going back to sleep and was woken up ten minutes later by a conversation between the wife and the local sheriff. I think the sheriff's words were something to the effect of "Don't worry ma'am, we're pretty sure it will be able to gets its head out of the Dorito's bag by itself."

I was literally not sure if I was dreaming this, or if was reality.

So I go back to the window and indeed, the creature's head is actually stuck in the freaking bag. It's working hard to shake out of it and it's breathing also seemed a bit labored. Either that, or it was really amped about the Dorito's. The Wife starts screaming that it's going to suffocate, and I have visions of having to remove a 25 pound creature from my front door. I'm looking at this thing, which we thought all the while was a raccoon, and I suddenly come to the realization that this thing is pretty freaking big and powerful looking. It was also missing the telltale signs (spotted tail) of a raccoon. Just as I'm trying to figure out what it is, it shakes its head free and looks right in the window and then quickly hauls ass: it was a grey tailed fox. If you haven't seen one up and close, it's one powerful, gnarly ass looking animal.

Another interesting night in the country and an evening we'll never forget.

(PS. We actually have a picture, which I will try to post tomorrow)