what the fox said...

We hear lots of things from our boat when we sleep with the hatches open. We can hear the fog horn from Thomas Point Lighthouse. We hear when the recycling truck comes to empty the dumpsters. We hear great blue herons squawk as they land on the pilings nearby. We hear neighbors wheeling dock carts to their boats.  Last night we heard something very strange. It woke Doug and Naia and I all at the same time, and we all popped up to figure it out. It was a repetitive howl/ shriek/ squawking noise and it was so close to the boat. I stuck my head out the hatch over our bed and figured out it was coming from the lawn just next to our boat, but I couldn't see anything. There are some bushes there and I guessed whatever it was, was in those bushes.

Our fear was that it might be the neighbor's cat. She is an outdoor cat and loves to go prowling around at all hours, so I wanted to be sure she was ok. Long story short, we figured out it wasn't the cat and went back to sleep listening to this awful sound over and over much of the night.

In the morning Zach and I searched different wild animal distress calls online. He guessed raccoon. Nope. Then we looked up fox and bingo! If you scroll 43 seconds into this clip, you will hear what we heard all night long


We have had fox "issues" at the marina before, and we see them all the time, but this was the first time we heard one so clearly. The kids wanted to find evidence of the fox, so Zach outfitted them for an expedition (he really finds the outfitting part just as much fun as the expedition which cracks me up) and off they went.

Zach was excited to find fox scat nearby, and also 2 dead mice (which were probably the work of the neighborhood cat, but I didn't want to spoil the fun for them.)

So it seems the fox was just having a hot date here in our bushes. It's all good. I love the idea of seeing some fox pups come spring time.

Unfortunately, going on a fox hunt and not actually seeing a fox made a certain wee lass unhappy. (And big brother made sure to mock her, but only when she wasn't able to see him doing so.)

But big brother did his best to get her to smile... literally.