Une voix de
la campagne

A Country Voice…
Reminder Letter From A Current Resident

Helen MacAndrew,
Hobby farmer
November 2001

y family and I have lived and worked in these areas for many years. I am what most of you would call dangerous or uncivilized: a fox. I am only roughly three feet long and weigh a meager fifteen pounds, yet am often seen as a threat. Some admire my vibrant auburn fur, enhanced by my pure white chest, black legs, and my lush luxuriant tail, tipped with black and white. We live on the farmlands and build our homes here. We build our dens in the under-brush, along the edge of the tree lines and frequently under old barns. We raise our families here. We don’t want to be near your homes and have even taught our young to stay away from you--perhaps we have more respect than you!

(photo: Microsoft clipart)

We don’t choose built up areas for the reason that we love our farmland and its open, luscious fields. We can travel through the fields unseen. We do this due to our fear of ‘the civilized’, for to us they are the probable, perilous predators. I, being the male in my family, must go out and hunt (shop) for the food needed by my family everyday. I bring food to my vixen when she is nursing. She ventures out only for water when she is nursing, this lasting a few weeks until the kits open their naïve little eyes. The vixen will then also go out and hunt. After a couple of months, we can let our young wander out a safe distance to play and learn all about the world beyond the den.

You have your vast housing surveys, all crammed together in the hustle and bustle of the city because you chose this life. We chose the farmland. We do not want your lifestyle, so we wouldn’t try to push you out and take over your area. Why do you want to do this to us? It is not only my family and I, we live among other creatures of the wild who feel the same as we do: the coyote, deer and raccoons, to name just a few.

Now, you want to expand your urban sprawl into our area. The farmers leave us alone and we share the land mostly in harmony. I must admit they don’t like us near their chicken coops. I’m sorry, we just cannot help it; it is in our way of life. They do, however, benefit from our hunting of the rodents, which like to destroy their property. I hope these farmers at least will know where to go, for we will not. We are going to be very confused. The adjustment could take us years, perhaps even our entire lives. Especially with many homes being built all at once on our hunting grounds. If we are still there when you come, you will simply expect us to leave. Where shall we go? We are not sure, and if it is the wrong way, my family could get shot, run over on your new roads, or captured, separated from our family and relocated (as you would call it). It is not that we lack intelligence; our food ran away!

We have within our nature an instinct for survival, just as you do. I am sure you would not like it if one day, upon awakening, you found your surroundings and your way of life being threatened or destroyed, and your food supply nowhere to be found. And yet you want to impose this on the farmers and us. If by chance we find a way to remain near our area, the extra pollution you bring along will surely force us further away, that is assuming we are still healthy enough to leave. We will keep trying to get away and just meet up with a different city, or yet another Super Highway.

(photo: NBEN-RENB)

There is a fact that many among you are forgetting. Your food (the flour, vegetables, fruit, juices, and wines) comes from these farm fields as well. Your meat, and the feed needed to supply it, is raised here. These items don’t merely fall from the sky and land in your supermarkets. And once it has been vanquished, replaced by buildings and roads, you can never get it back. Whatever will you tell your children and grandchildren?

We, the creatures of the woods and fields, beg of you, the developers and the ‘wanna be’ residents, to keep your city homes and lives in your city. And we will keep our wild ways preserved in our beautiful, dearly cherished, farm country. Possibly, if you could break away from your colossal captivity of buildings and pavement for just one day, you too could understand our reluctance to change our way of life. Perhaps you also could notice and perchance receive pleasure from our gorgeous, green, near indescribable expanse of graceful fields that make up our environment, for which we feel so much affection and pride.

Brought to you by the horror-struck inhabitants of the outskirts of the cities.