Spring is life (and death)

I do so enjoy Springtime - especially the very start of it. I like seeing the new buds on the trees and plants, the grass coming back to life, the birds and animals coming out of woodwork singing and dancing, essentially. But I was reminded today of how Spring is life, but as is always the case with nature, also death.

I was mowing down the weeds and a pasture area I had left overgrown last year, to try and give the grass seed underneath a better chance of getting established. It worked! As I mowed down the weeds, a beautiful green carpet of fine blades of new grass was left. I was feeling so happy with myself, when I noticed a strange, reddish spot in that new grass. It did not look like trash...Now, last year, a fox had made here den in the culvert (drainpipe - for you city-slickers) under my driveway. When the kits came out last summer, they were super-cute, and not afraid! They would even pose for pictures! Eventually, the foxes moved out, but it turns out one of those kits never made it past my north pasture. I found it curled up in some of the softest grass there was out there. I thought for a second that maybe it was still asleep (even though I had just run a lawnmower 3 feet away). It had not decomposed yet, or been found by anything that would eat it. It looks like the poor little fox just went to sleep there, tired, cold, hungry, and alone. And it stayed down for good. I wanted to protect the fox from being scavenged, so I stopped mowing and dug a grave for it in one of the remaining barren patches of the field. There I laid the fox to rest, with a little prayer that it rest easy now, and that it's body will help the new life that will cover the bare earth above it.

I've dug a lot of graves at this place, I hope maybe this will be the last, but I say that every time...