The Oakland Hills area of Bethlehem, where I live, was once all farmland. Now it just grows roughly three houses per acre, so you can imagine my delight at discovering a fox in the neighborhood. I first saw it in a field of subdivided by as yet not built upon plots.

A few months ago, the calm of an early morning walk was interrupted by one of my neighbors firing up a chain saw to have-at a dead tree. The racket startled me and fairly terrified the fox, which caught my eye as he or she shot across the knee-high field grass in huge bounds. It looked then like a gray fox instead of the more common red color variation.

PHOTO BY DMITRIY KARELIN (Copyright; all rights reserved): A wild red fox.

This morning, shortly before 7, I was walking along the same field, which had recently been cut; its grasses left in long, scattered piles. I spotted what appeared to be a large house cat trotting across the field, perhaps 200 yards away. Then I spotted the long bushy tail. I stopped and watched. The fox noticed that I stopped, too. He watched me a few seconds, then went back to work. This time, perhaps because of the distance and the early-morning sunlight, the animal appeared more reddish.

Have you ever seen one of those nature programs in which an arctic fox stands still, cocks its head to listen for rodents, then jumps nearly straight up to pounce into the snow?

Well, that’s what this fox was doing! Except that, instead of snow, he was pouncing into piles of dried grass. The hunting didn’t appear too fruitful, though. It may have been my presence, or perhaps the growing daylight that got the fox trotting again. After a 10-minute show, he disappeared into a hedgerow.

The sighting reminded me of a rather disturbing story I’d read about the exploding population of foxes in–of all places–Berlin, Germany. Some people are actually hand-feeding the wild animals–never a good idea. But in this case it’s really dangerous because of the growing presence of a horrible parasite carried by the Berlin foxes. The parasite …, well, if you really want to know about it, you can read all about it here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,511825,00.html.

I hope my neighborhood’s fox population stays healthy. For one, it could make a dent in the local rabbit population. Sometimes you can see in my yard as many as five rabbits frolicking, fighting or, um, shall we say rocking the Casbah? It’s like a scene from that classic horror flick “Night of the Lepus” around here.

I am banned from working on my home. I may mow the lawn, take out the trash, even tighten a minimally leaking faucet. But for all else, I must hire help.

It’s not that I’m a mechanical idiot. No, wait, it is precisely that I am a mechanical idiot that has prompted my ban from home repair projects.

In my heart, I know the ban is unfair. But even the best arguments in my defense make me sound like Larry Flynt defending pornography’s right to exist. Yes, yes, it’s all logically sound but no one wants to hear it anyway.

I could detail (and defend) a hundred home improvement catastrophes, but the only one that is or ever will be needed to prosecute me was launched a few years ago as my wife, Cathy, and I were preparing to host a party to celebrate our daughter’s graduation from high school.

Actually, Cathy was doing all the preparing. A week before the event, over morning coffee, I was marveling at her plans. It looked like it was going to be a sensation. I was inspired to get more involved and asked how I could help.

Cathy thought a moment (mentally eliminating potentially explosive projects). “The thing I would really like for you to do is to paint the front door.”

I rejoiced. Indeed! That door was a mess! This was a project of great promise and prominence. I had a flash vision of myself welcoming our guests into the elegant portal of our home, “My word,” they would whisper to one another, “10 Downing Street has nothing on this place. Just look at the …”

“What color?” I asked. “Black?” Cathy thought a moment, “I’d love a nice, rich burgundy,” she replied.

“… rich, lustrous burgundy lacquer and polished brass kickplates. What a showplace!”

Two days before the party, I arose before dawn to look over the highly polished brass pieces I had slaved over, and then to run off to the closest big-box home-a-torium store to buy the paint.

And there, as in so many of my home projects, is where things began to sour.
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