The male fox found a green patch of grass in the yellow sun.

He yawned,

and then went to sleep. He was a bachelor. He liked to take naps. He was a red fox, but his coat was turning grey.

He had one philosophy, if foxes can have a philosophy

but it might be more accurate that they have an instinct,

although, this fox was different from most foxes.

His yellow eyes were closed. When they opened, they were full of wildness, madness, and cunning.

He trotted to the stream, and lapped-up water with his long red tongue.

Then he bit a flee that was particularly annoying.

BARKING

“No,” he thought. “I was enjoying the afternoon. Now, I need to run. Now, I need to play the game. The female dogs are after me.”

He laughed to himself, but it was half-hearted laughter. He was tired and wanted to sleep, but there was something in him that could not be caught.

He forded the stream, and crisscrossed a couple of times.

Then he sniffed the wind with his big black nose. They were a mile away, he thought.

Most foxes, when they hear barking, panic. Adrenaline floods their brains and makes them insane. They can run for miles until they get too tired, and then they curl up in a hollow tree and sleep.

The bald hunter finds the fox and pops it with his hunting rifle. Then the skin is stretched on a log cabin somewhere as a trophy… but

the male fox didn’t mind.

He was crazy. He had seen his brothers and sisters tacked to a wooden wall by a moonshiner five miles away.

He didn’t hate the moonshiner—that’s just what moonshiners did. After a drunk, they got bored and needed to kill something.

The male fox didn’t hate the female hounds. They were just obeying their master—the bald hunter.

Something set this fox apart—it might be magic, or something else. He didn’t panic. His death meant nothing to him, but his philosophy rang in his ears like Christmas bells…

“Can’t be caught. Can’t be caught,” he said to himself.

The trick of the chase is to conserve energy—to always be five steps ahead of your enemy. The male fox scrambled up the hill for a bit. Then he rested. He looked into the valley and saw the hunter with his female hounds. They were sniffing each other’s butts and baying loudly (not the hunter—the female hounds).

Execution canyon was four hundred yards away—that’s where primitive people killed the member of their tribe who said something they didn’t agree with. Forget social ostracism—they just pushed ’em off a cliff. There were skulls at the bottom—lots of them. It took a long time to kill-off all of the individualists, until the rest of the tribe agreed on everything, or were too terrified to say something different.

The male fox knew about this from studying cave drawings. A preschooler could have drawn them. They were essentially stick figures, but the stick figures were cutting off legs and arms. If a psychologist studied them, he would recommend a maximum-security facility for the child drawing inappropriate artwork.

Who cares if the child isn’t violent, makes the honor roll, and believes in God—their artwork is offensive.

A lone pine tree had fallen across the gulch. It was dead, dried, and cracked in several places.

The male fox gingerly stepped onto the bark. It gave just a little bit. The fox took his paw back and then tried again. There was no going back.

Being caught was worse than death. Death had no meaning. The fox was willing to go all the way.

“Don’t look down. Don’t look down,” he said to himself. When he got halfway across, he didn’t know why he smiled. He was old, but he was still alive. There’s a difference in being alive and being alive. He was the fox that had never been caught. He still enjoyed the thrill of being hunted.

On a cold night, his yellow eyes had spied a TV, where a car chase was going on. The fugitive from justice was going 150 miles per hour in a Mustang GT500. How many people want to be chased, but they are too afraid of being caught? The fox thought.

It’s sad, really.

There are no risk takers, anymore.

And the hunt continues…