Emily is a stone cold killer. We nap together everyday and haunt the expensive corridors of Home Depot together, But despite her sweet demeanor with people, she spends most of her time outdoors hunting for chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits and the odd groundhog. And she stands for hours watching out the front window for the strange new creature that may appear at dusk.

Dogs are my friends as a rule. Emily, our labrador youngster, is becoming a great one and has fit into our family beautifully–that is if you can overlook a couple of minor behavior problems. Somewhere in her ancestry, a terrier is hiding in the DNA patch. When her prey drive kicks in, she is transformed as if she had been under Dr. Jekyll’s care or been bitten by Lon Chaney in his movie role as the werewolf. Oh, the birds are safe-and we have them in spades: pileated woodpeckers, red-shouldered hawks and a co-dependent family of blue birds that maintains a lease on our bird house(mainly enforced by the blue birds’ hostile expressions- have you noticed they wear a perpetual grimmace?). But if it has fur and stays on the ground for very long, Emily is going to get it!

The crows are the informers who keep us posted. Their network of spies summon the feathered tribe whenever a cat, a snake or a hawk is hunting in our woods. They keep up an alarming racket, even daring to swoop down on the hawks. They are at least as big as the red shouldered hawks, but lack any truly lethal weapons like talons or sharp beaks. Instead, they rely on their numbers and a cacophony of squawks to harass the raptors. Emily always watches attentively when they are making a fuss. She knows something is afoot.

Emily has a habit of sitting in the living room window every morning and night, and often growls under her breath. Straining our eyes to catch a glimpse of what arouses her, we finally give up, thinking perhaps she has caught a glimpse of a deer crossing the road. But, in fact, that was not her quarry.

One morning after Emily had given up watching in favor of bounding around the backyard chasing squirrels, we caught sight of a reddish- tan ball of fur sitting on the edge of the woods. It was a fox-a big red fox- with a billowy tail, its sides tinged with dark gray and standing perhaps more than half Emily’s considerable size. This really thrilled us, because we feared all the foxes had been displaced by the invasive coyotes- and the unstoppable urban sprawl.

A day or two later, we spotted the fox again, this time walking ahead of us on our evening stroll, ranging through the front yards of our neighbors. He kept his distance, but was clearly familiar and unafraid when it came to human beings. Since then, we have seen a fox at twilight several times crossing the road to follow our little creek (known to us as “Rocky Comfort Creek”) as it wanders down the drainage easement of thick forest through our pretty heavily populated neighborhood. Since a friend near Vienna, Georgia was bitten in his garage by a rabid fox (and had to undergo the painful shots), I keep my distance from our red raider, but I am fascinated and thrilled to know that development has not crowded the foxes out.

This reminds me of a tale from my years at Pebble Hill Plantation where I was director for a decade. I heard repeatedly a story, told by elderly and often life-time employees, about the capture of a pair of foxes on the plantation. They were caged and kept as a pair and were even given names. Personalities were ascribed to them. They were devoted to each other, and lovingly raised a litter of kits. Foxes seem to mate for life and the two were clearly a pair. When the male fox died, the female-it was said-grieved herself to death, dying of loneliness.

This is fanciful, I suppose, but foxes, like most creatures -especially birds and mammals- are sentient creatures. New revelations about animals’ intelligence and their emotions come to light every day: the female elephants who take in the orphan after its mother is killed by ivory outlaws, the great ape that rescues a human infant who has fallen into his pen at the zoo, the crow that learns to solve complex puzzles to get at a morsel of food, or learns to recognize unfriendly faces and passes that knowledge on to its young, or the complex languages of parrots and whales. I am no scientist, and my hunting days are long past, but I have always heeded my mother’s and father’s admonition: “Don’t kill it unless you plan to eat it.” Once I did have a stringy meal of sparrow. I was barely old enough to fire the shotgun my father allowed me to fire just once, but I hit a tiny hapless bird skipping along a row of already picked cotton.

After a lifetime’s association with dogs and wildlife, I feel confident that animals, especially birds and mammals, exist on a plane of intelligence and sensitivity that most of us once believed was the exclusive domain of human beings. I think it would be a mistake to imagine that animals aspire to be human. Instead, I think they share our nature and we, theirs.

Unable to attend church services during the Covid pandemic, we have taken to watching services carried on You Tube from Canterbury Cathedral in England, center of the world-wide Anglican Communion which includes our own Episcopal Church. Each morning the Dean of the Cathedral reads Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer with lots of insightful and delightful remarks about the day’s psalm and scriptures. He does this (weather permitting) in the garden, where there are birds, beautiful plants, cats, and a pig pen. I have no doubt that any church that featured a service that met in such surrounding occasionally, with living creatures and plants in amazing array, likely would appeal to new and different worshipers, as well as to its regular members in new and endearing ways. It is more difficult to be critical and accusing in the presence of animals-they are (for the most part) indifferent to our failings. And, we seem to find their ordinary activities charming and a source of mesmerizing entertainment. We should be so charitable to each other.

I captured this photo of one of our red shouldered hawks with my cell phone. Obviously, the blue birds had flown before his arrival, as you can tell by his forlorn expression. Notice how the opening has been chewed on by squirrels. Do squirrels eat the chicks or eggs?