Photo of the Day: A London Fox

Today’s photo is a London fox. I had my first encounter with a London fox around 1998 or 1999, when I was there for a Lucent meeting. I was staying in an bed and breakfast (in the classic English sense, not an AirBnB) somewhere out in the suburbs. It’s been quite a while, and I really don’t remember where it was. I was coming home moderately late one evening, and at the edge of my vision, I saw an animal run along the street, and then into a park or similar.

Having grown up in the country, I had very occasionally seen foxes running across a road late at night. I knew a fox’s gait, and the figure I saw in the distance was unmistakeably a fox. It was too big to be a cat (at least until I met Simon and Tessa), and it was too lithe to be a dog. So, fox. I was surprised, and wondered what other wonders London had in store¹.

Still, the next morning I went into work, and said, “this is strange, but I think I saw a fox last night.” The London natives looked at me dumbly, and said, “Yeah, it was a fox. They are common here.” I still thought that they were rare and unusual beasts in London, and was not overly disappointed when I didn’t see another on that trip.

Fast-forward about twenty years, and I find myself actually living in London. I get in the habit of walking home every evening, and I realize that foxes are the UK equivalent of raccoons in the US. As I get to know London better,

One of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution

1. I did not know about the talking foxes at the time. I never met one (that I knew of), but fingers crossed. ↩