Midnight Mystery

Last night I heard screaming coming from outside. It was an eerie, plaintive sound. At first I thought it might be the build-up to a cat fight. But two whining, sputtering cats would have already been brawling by the time I reached the den window. Lights off, I gently raised the window just enough to detect a clearer sample of the sound, when suddenly all went pin-drop quiet.

I waited a few moments, trying to convince myself that whatever animals had been lost, scared or threatened were now continuing on their way. But just as I was about to close the window and head to bed, I saw it in the neighbor’s porch light at the edge of their yard. Easily four feet long, but only two feet off the ground, an orangey glimmer was heading purposefully around to the far side of the house. Once out of sight, the screaming resumed. This animal was not lost, but looking for something or someone.

My brain finally locked in the visual, and my memory harkened back to the strange chattering and screaming noises out back of Cousin Mona’s house in Kittery, Maine that night almost two summers ago. What I’d just seen and heard was an adult fox. You Tube confirmed for me that a Vixen’s screaming can mean that it's mating season.

Foxes are not a rare sight in this neighborhood on the edge of two wooded areas that bleed into Four Mile Run, with a wooded trail that leads beyond the inner suburbs. But typically these stealth creatures are hunting and scavenging, and almost always completely silent. Satisfied with a plausible solution, I slept soundly for the first time in several nights.