Soixante

I went to a Bridal shower today for the wife-to-be of the son of our first American friends.  (Such a complicated sentence.)

 
It was a beautiful affair.  Everything was laid out with care and affection.  And the groom-to-be was also there, adding his hilarious comments to ensure nothing was taken too seriously.  All the guests were people who loved these two, some of them had known them since they were born.  Cousins and aunts and their mothers and so many helpful and organising people, a huge support group, washing up, serving, attending.  There was someone who would write down the names of all the people, someone who would pack away all the paper, and such a pile of wonderful kitchen appliances surrounded them at the end.  They are indeed a lucky pair.

All these rituals that people go through before the actual wedding, which is decided upon months in advance, and then finally the day arrives and it is this extravagant professing of love and commitment in public, in front of all your friends and relations.  It is a day to remember all your life, with photographs and movies of the day, a day when you are the most important person in the world, and everyone only has eyes for you.

(I think that if it was me, I would use all the money that I would have spent on the wedding to buy some lovely books, and then we would go on a wonderful trip somewhere in the world, starting with the Galapagos Islands.)
 
The other evening I was coming home very late, very tired, my headlights pointing out the mounds of dirty ice-covered snow lining the dark road near our house, when I was suddenly startled out of my reverie as a beautiful fox trotted across the road, its lithe body and magnificent tail illuminated  by my lights.  I always get such a rush of pleasure at seeing a fox.  A sighting implies that things are well in the animal world, everything more or less in balance, a good supply of mice, rabbits, and all the other things these opportunistic feeders eat.

There are both red and gray foxes in Massachusetts, but strangely enough the gray fox is also mostly red, so I have no idea what this one was. I was rather horrified to learn that there is a hunting season for foxes in Massachusetts, when you may shoot them for their fur.  Why would anyone need the fur of a this small creature?  The biggest fox only weighs about 15 pounds!

Studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between lower fox populations and an increase in Lyme's disease.  The Eastern Coyote is a hybrid between a coyote and a wolf, and they have moved into this area en masse, with dire consequences.  The Eastern Coyote out-competes and kills the native Fox population, which leads to a rise in the number of small mammals like mice and chipmunks who would ordinarily be lower in numbers due to the fox's appetite for them.  These tiny animals are the ones that transmit Lyme's disease bacteria to ticks, so that if there are more of them,
there is an increase in ticks that carry Lyme disease.

Foxes are amazingly adaptable creatures.  One night in London my niece came out with us and then went all the way home alone on the bus when it was already very late.  I worried about her, so stayed up until she had arrived safely in her flat, and she texted me several times on her bus-trip home, about the strange people on the late-night bus, how I shouldn't worry because she is so used to doing this (but what about the strange people?), how she was so happy to have my daughter as her cousin, and the last one was to tell me that she had arrived home, and just as she was nearing her building, she had witnessed a beautiful healthy fox trotting away down the street, and it had made her so happy.  I went to sleep thinking of the clever fox, how like dogs they are, but how they are also cat-like, and Paula's fox made me happy too, as she had known it would.