The Fox Encounters Origional Sin

In a field, behind a house in the country, many animals from the surrounding woods crossed paths. Among those creatures who's common routes cut through the field was a fox.

The fox spent his days, wandering the same routes, over grass and under brush and shrub. There was a clear path from years of wandering, that turned to tunnels on the bushes and a flat, mat-covered path that cut the tall grass. At places, his path intersected with, and followed the paths of the other animals, and these he found to be the most interesting.

The fox led a simple life, going about his way and eating what he found. He nibbled sun-warmed grass here, some robin's eggs if he was having a lucky day. He enjoyed the simple flavors of his daily menus, made up of the local offerings from the Lord.

One day, some men came to the house. The fox noticed their alien odors as he crept along his tunnel through the shrubs and into the field. He stopped at the threshold to the property, and peeked across to see the men sitting on the back porch.

He could smell the food which he saw the eat. It was burned by fire and pungent. The men made their great wooping noises at eachother as they ate. One of them gazed in the direction of the fox, who froze.

Their eyes locked. The man signaled to the others in his pack and they stopped their wooping and froze as well. Eyes set on the front of their head, the fox noted their keen vision to spot him, and the smell of odd flesh that they ate: these were dangerous hunters larger than the fox. The fox was nervous.

The first man stood up, a part of his meal dangling from a foreclaw. It slowly advanced on its hind legs as men do. The fox knew they were slow in the end, and determined a point in the field between him and the man. "Should he advance beyond that patch of wildflowers," thought the fox,"I will duck back beyond this tunnel, through which the clumsy man cannot follow."

The man never came to the flowers. He stopped on the matted path ahead of the fox, made some quieter sounds at him, and dropped a bit of the odd flesh it was eating in the middle of the path. The large predator then backed away.

The fox suspected a trick, and waited, frozen, while the men stood back on their porch and watched him, watching them. For a long time, the fox would not regard the obvious bait. Slow and clumsy they might be, but the men were well known to be dangerously tricky. The fox had once watched a man in the woods, unseen. The slow creatures could kill anything within a dash away with a loud "Bang!" The fox had witnessed this deadly strike on a deer, who was overcome at range in a split second faster than it could dart into the brush. Even a snake cannot kill what it can't reach, but a man can.

After a long while, the men grew bored that the fox would not step into their trap, and disappeared into their house. It was getting late, and the fox was getting hungry. His forage was thrown off by the delay these events had caused, and his stomach was empty. The men were gone, but left their bait behind. The fox quickly ran out and grabbed it and brought it back into the safe covering of the bush with him.

The bait was the most fantastic thing the fox had tasted. There was a burned meat he had never encountered. There were the salts such as can be found on the rocks licked by deer. The fats were flavorful as if rendered from a thousand field mice. It was soft and chewed easily, without the sharp, poking bones. Even the leaves that stuck to it were thick, water-filled, and flavored in the flesh. After devouring the most delicious thing he had ever tasted, the fox cleaned and licked his lips well into the night.

Ever since that day, the fox was not the same. The grass tasted bland and bitter. The field mice were small, and lean. Even the occasional egg only teased to him a hint of the flavor of man's bait. The fox grew ever leaner himself. It wasn't so much that he had no appetite, it was simply that he hungered now only for the food of man.

The next week, the skinny and hungry fox's path led him around back to the field behind the house. He could still smell the faint traces of where his meal from days ago had lain on the matted grass. His mouth salivated as he saw the house and smelled the men's food.

Slowly, the fox approached the house. He knew this was wrong, he knew the danger these predators posed. He could not resist the memory of his meal and the luring smell and his growing hunger. There was an unguarded bin of the scraps from the last meal of the men outside. The men were all inside and it was dark. The fox knew the men only came out in the light mostly, so he thought he could get to the bin safely.

But the fox had to knock over the bin to get at the scraps. The noise alerted the men. They came out of their home and were dangerously close to the fox. It was, however, too late. The fox couldn't stop stuffing his face and ignored the dangerous men advancing.

There was a loud boom, the fox lay dead.

The men that week dressed his corpse in thick, watery greens and salts, burned it, ate it, and discarded his bones in the bin with the scraps.