FOX OVER THE HILL !!!!!!!

FOX OVER THE HILL!!!
1619 Grand Avenue

There was a fox on the hillside! We were about 5 and 6 years old. "Mommy! We saw a fox over the hill!" Anne and I looked at each other, waiting for Mom's response. I was so excited I could have just popped! Never mind that we'd been terrified when we saw it. We lived in North Fort Worth on a hillside over-looking Jacksboro Highway. All of us played along the hillside that ran along the highway, and invented games as we ran in and out of the Johnson grass and the cane that grew wild to cover the hillside. All of us eventually outgrew that wonderful time. Each of us eventually arrived at an age where we were too old for that stuff. To us it had been the greatest adventure in the world, and the very best source of inspiration for inventing games to play.

Anne and I had been nosing around the hillside and were playing on an old sycamore tree that had fallen years before. There was no bark left on it and we were just inventing a new game, when out of nowhere a fox appeared. As I recall, it looked exactly like the pictures in one of our storybooks. Wasn't there a picture of a fox in Grimm's Faerie Tales or Peter and the Wolf, or maybe Peter Pan? We were terrified and both of us started screaming. You know, that high pitched piercing scream that little girls do? Those are the kind of screams that would surely set off sensors at Carswell Air Force Base and probably ionize the lower cloud layer.

Finally our next-door neighbor appeared at the top of the hill. At last! Someone was going to come save us. We continued to scream so he'd be sure to know exactly where to find us. Finally he was close enough that he could see us, and then he shouted, "SHUT UP!", and turned and walked back up the hill. What in the world was wrong with him? Couldn't he see that we were trapped and in danger? Why didn't he come rescue us?

The little fox just sat there a few yards away, probably wondering what we were, and how we could possibly make a noise just like an injured rabbit. I think we'd both stopped breathing, eyes transfixed on the monster before us that would devour us if we even batted an eye. After what seemed like forever, the little fox almost shrugged and then trotted off. We looked at each other and wondered if it was safe to run up the hillside to the house. Would the fox come back and chase us? We ran all the way back up, just in case. Whew! That was a close one!

Mom wasn't even surprised when we told her that we'd seen a fox. She said, "Well, it probably came up from the river to hunt for mice to eat. Somehow, it took some of the excitement and adventure out of having been "trapped" by a fox. It only wanted mice? Our older sister didn't believe it, and said we'd made it up, and then she poked her nose back in her book. Our brother got all excited and ran out the door to try to find it.

After that, we looked for the little fox every time we went to play on the hillside, but we never saw it again. We never forgot the little fox and it proved to be another source of invention for games to play until we no longer needed to be chased by a fox.