Note
Boy, I'm falling behind on my AOWN reports. The latest was a red fox, spotted as I was nearing the 2nd green, the fox was coming from the woods just west of the green and didn't seem very concerned about my presence. But it seemed so unscared that it made me start to think about what might be wrong with it. And by now I was on the east edge of the green and it was on the south edge and getting quite close to me.
So I thought about my options, and fortunately this is an area where I have lots of experience, namely club selection, and I pulled out a sand wedge. It wasn't an obvious choice. I'd have maximum reach with my driver, the smoking D1, but I'm less accurate with it and under conditions of close combat and high stress I suppose it's conceivable that I might whiff, even though a well-delivered center-of-the-clubhead blow would certainly knock Mr. Fox back a bit. Whereas the sand wedge, I love the sand wedge, really accurate with that, but with the 56 degrees of loft and a heavy flange it's really better suited to, say, beheading copperheads (not that anyone would want to do that). But the sand wedge it was.
And I could see Mr. Fox noticed, because he must have figured I wanted to play -- he trotted into the sand trap, sat down, and scratched himself for a while. I assume he was an elderly male? I still was nervous, still had the wedge out. And after a bit, Mr. Fox trotted around a little more, looked at me for a while, sat down and scratched some more, and then eventually trotted off in the direction of the tee.
My conclusions:
1. If it didn't have rabies, it certainly had fleas.
2. Maybe I should start packing some heat when I head out. I've heard a 9mm is effective, I wouldn't know, the last weapon I fired was about 40 years ago and I think it was a 90mm, it was sticking out the front end of a tank at Fort Knox, and if a 9mm is just 10% (or even 1%) as potent as a 90mm, there wouldn't be anything but a few wisps of fur (and maybe a flea or two) left of Mr. Fox.