Good News: No pictures for this post!

We've seen a fox in our back yard.

Foxes in your yard aren't precisely commonplace in the US, so I didn't immediately realize what I was looking at.

There is a park in Richmond that has foxes in a pen. You can stand above the pen and stare down into its weedy recesses, hoping to spy one. Then, finally, you notice a patch of gray among the green. The fox! You stand and stare some more, feeling strangely peaceful.

Then you realize that you've been staring at a piece of wood for 20 minutes.

The fox in our yard here was much larger than the US variety. Not quite "Dear God, it's going to carry away the children" big, but certainly bigger. So I figured that I was probably hallucinating.
The fox didn't sprout wings, or stand up on its hind legs and do a shuffle step so I realized it was a real fox and pointed it out to the rest of the family. This led to all sorts of stimulating conversation which mostly went like this:

Quentin: "Ooooh! A fox! Did you see the fox, Dad?"

Me: "Yes, Quentin. In fact, I told you it was there."

Elaine: "How cool. I can't believe there is a fox in the garden."

Mallory: "SWIPER, NO SWIPING! I'M NOT SCARED OF THE BOX"

Me: "I can't believe there is a fox in the garden"

Quentin: "Did you see the fox, Mom?"

etc.

This morning as I headed off to work I realized that I had stepped in what I assumed was dog poop.

Then I realized what it had to be: fox poop. Cool. Fox poop.