Two smaller foxes stood several yards behind it.
They stayed close to the brush, barely visible between the trees.
The rehabilitator immediately asked the woman to move farther back.
Whatever relationship existed between the animals, the safest thing they could do was give them space and work quickly.
The trapped fox was exhausted.
The netting had tightened around its leg, but fortunately it had not cut deeply enough to cause the kind of injury the rehabilitator had feared.
Once the animal was safely restrained, the plastic was cut away piece by piece.
Nobody tried to touch the fox more than necessary.
Nobody tried to feed it by hand.
And the woman didn’t move closer for a photograph.
After the leg was examined, the rehabilitator decided the fox needed further assessment before it could simply be released.
That meant the other foxes would leave without it.
The woman expected the fox near the trees to disappear as soon as people began moving around.
It didn’t.
It remained at a distance while the injured animal was placed into a carrier.
Then the carrier was taken toward the vehicle.
Only after the door closed did the fox turn toward the woods.
The two smaller animals followed.
By afternoon, the backyard was empty again.
The woman removed every piece of loose garden netting she could find around the property.
She also checked beneath the fence and around the shed.
Three mornings passed.
No fox.
On the fourth, she looked through the kitchen window while the coffee was brewing.
One fox was standing near the old fence.
She couldn’t know whether it was waiting for the injured animal, checking the place where it had last seen it, or simply moving through familiar territory.
Wild animals don’t explain their behavior to us, and she didn’t want to invent an answer.
It stayed for less than a minute.
Then it walked back into the trees.
The rehabilitator called several days later.
The injured fox had recovered well enough to be released near the area where it had been found.
The woman wasn’t there for the release.
She didn’t ask to be.
A few weeks later, she occasionally saw foxes crossing the far end of the property again.
She stopped trying to work out whether they were the same ones.
She did make one permanent change.
There is no plastic garden netting in her backyard anymore.
This is a fictional story. The characters and events are imaginary. The text was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
