A Wild Ride

A Wild Ride

I guess I should really title it “A Wildlife Ride.”  Ellen, Kevin and I went out on an early morning ride.  It was one of those brisk, sunny days that you get in October--made all the better by the lovely fall foliage.

As we started down the hill, I saw something up ahead on the trail.  It was the fox!  We have been seeing one on the hill in the last few weeks.  A woman a few houses down said that a pair of baby fox grew up in her backyard, and they used to play out in the horse pasture.  Consequently, they are not one bit afraid of horses.  Instead of running away from us, the fox will actually approach us, and one day he even followed Kevin when he was on Starry.  This only started a few weeks ago, so seeing the fox is still a very special event.

No sooner did the fox trot out of sight, but the flock of turkeys strutted over the trail.  We see turkey often enough, but it is still neat to see them, too.  I think they are just so beautiful, and I sure can understand why Benjamin Franklin wanted to make them the national bird instead of the eagle.

Not a minute later, a few deer crossed the trail, too.  Deer are as common as robins, so that wasn’t such a big deal.  As soon as they were out of sight, we saw a fox squirrel followed by a black squirrel.  This was all before we even crossed the river.

We were only going to be out for about an hour because Ellen had to go to work, so when we crossed the river, we went right off in a trot.  The horses were feeling frisky because of the weather.  At one point, Ellen spotted more turkeys on the other side of the river.  We seldom see more than one group on our rides, so that was a surprise!

We did a little cantering, and when we got to the section of trail that we usually canter, we galloped, instead.  It was quite a gallop, too.  

We did some trotting on the way home, and then we slowed it down to a walk.  Good thing we did, because Ellen spotted a blue heron very close to us sitting on the bank of our side of the river.  Because we were so close, the heron took off to fly to the other side of the river.  We love the herons.

If that wasn’t good enough, on the way back up the hill, we saw the fox trotting right towards us on the trail!  He went off to the side of the hill and sat there for a few minutes while we exclaimed how pretty he was.

We don’t know if our little fox friend is going to stick around this winter or move on, but in the meantime, we will thrill every time we see him.