My morning routine begins with a brief trip out front with our dog.

Wednesday morning's trip, however, proved hardly routine.

While Louie got busy with his usual painstaking sniff of multiple blades of grass, I sleepily looked down the driveway toward our garage. What I saw surprised me.

As you can see in my previous posting, Louie sports two large, white pointy ears (the better to hear the UPS truck with). As I looked down our drive yesterday, I spotted another set of large, pointy ears, in brown, about knee-high from the ground. Below those ears? Two dark, focused eyes. 

My brain flipped through the possibilities. A dog? Cat? Wait. No … that's a fox!

We stared at each other, me transfixed, the fox sitting regally on his haunches. After a minute, he hunkered down, tail wrapping around paws. 

  While I had heard the eerie cry of a fox one summer night long ago, I'd never seen one in our neighborhood before. I thought about raccoons, and how spotting them in daylight is not a good thing, and I wondered whether the same would apply to foxes.

I took Louie inside, fired up my laptop, and pulled out the township calendar to look up the number for animal control, just in case. I watched the fox from our kitchen window, and saw his eyes blinking and his head bobbing a bit, as if he were about to doze off.

   Google quickly allayed my fears. It turns out that foxes will sleep out in the open, and the sun-warmed leaves out back seemed a good spot for a snooze.

I headed out with my camera, and took a first (blurry) shot. I took a couple of casual steps closer, and snapped another photo. One more step became too close for fox comfort. He rose, looked over at me once more, and padded off toward our neighbor's back yard.

I'm sorry I disturbed your rest, Mr. Fox. Next time I'll let you be.

My morning visitor.