April 14, 2008 Spring is here! The weather was really nice all last week, and this week is supposed to be beautiful as well. On Thursday evening I took a walk down Campus Road eager to take advantage of the blue skies. As I was leaving campus, I saw something move to my right. I looked to the side, where there was a large ravine. On the side of the ravine, a large reddish animal was crouched perfectly still — a fox! I have only seen a fox once before, on campus the week before I started freshman year.
I stopped in my tracks and stared at the fox, about two hundred feet away. Eventually, the fox scampered off and I started walking again. I saw something move again. About ten feet below where the fox had been, there were four baby animals playing and fighting. They were gray, and at first I thought they were muskrats. However, I then deduced that they must have been baby foxes. The animals romped around for a bit, and I stayed to watch until they disappeared down into a hole in the ground.
I continued walking, charmed by the weather and the foxes. After a few hundred yards, fields started to appear on both sides of the road. Some of the fields showed signs of being mowed down cornfields. There were perhaps a half dozen of these large fields, and each one had a small pack of deer grazing. Each time I passed, the deer would freeze and stare at me as I moved along the road. It reminded me of the way my family would freeze if we saw an animal passing by.
As I kept walking, it struck me how cliché it sounded to have seen families of different wild animals — like a scene from Bambi. I thought to myself, "If I only saw a family of rabbits, it would be the final sign of spring." Sure enough, a moment later, two bunnies crossed the road in front of me. Funny how things like that happen sometimes.
And now it's 7 p.m. on Monday evening, and I'm preparing for the start of the Spring Intramurals season. At 8 p.m. the basketball season kicks off with our first game, and at 9 p.m., we're playing soccer on the turf. Hopefully we'll win both matches and start off towards another victorious season!
