Grotto Iona in the rain; the headless chicken dropped by the fox as it ran down Sunrise ahead of my bike

Yesterday, I wrote about the bright, warm, sun of Tuesday, the long days we now savor and the lovely pleasant weather that we wait so long for and get to enjoy for such a short time. Then clouds came, and rain - cool rain. The day was even longer than before, but no sun could be seen.

I'm glad for the rain.

It knocks the fire danger down. It means there is less chance our clean, sweet, air will fill with the smoke of burning forests and then be sweet and clean no more.

This is iPhone stuff, by the way. I had my regular camera with me on my coffee break and early on, I took some absolutely superb pictures before I discovered that, once again, I had forgotten to put a compact flash card in it after the previous download.

Thank goodness, the iPhone does not need memory cards! Soon, I came upon Grotto Iona.

Grotto Iona, through the rain-splattered passenger window of the Ford Escape.

In the evening, the rain stopped. I set out to take a short bicycle ride, but then decided to return to the Grotto, which made it a medium ride of 12 miles. For late comers who may not know this, the Grotto was made by Paul Mahoney, the father of Abby, of Abby's Home Cooking, plus Tim and all the other members of the large Mahoney clan.

I had earlier written that he made it as a cemetery in which to bury his wife after her death, and then for himself and other family later, but Abby recently told me Iona is not buried there at all, but in Montana. As he did not have a grave to visit yet mourned for his wife, Paul made the Grotto, named it for her and subsequently came here when he needed quiet, spiritual space with reminders of her in which to mourn. After his death, he was buried here.

Others have been since and will be in the future.

After I left the Grotto and started to pedal back toward our house, I saw a small animal far ahead, trotting at the side of the road. I thought maybe it was a fox, but it was too far away to tell for sure. I kept pedaling and finally I ascertained that it was indeed a fox and it was carrying something in its mouth.

If I had been carrying a big telephoto lens with me, I could have gotten a photo, but it was still too far. Last summer, during the time I had my original Wasilla by 300 and Then Some blog on hiatus, I met a fox on this stretch of road and had some pretty good interaction with it and got some decent photos.

Maybe, I thought, this was the same fox. Maybe I could get close again, and get a picture of it with whatever prey it carried. I tried to pedal as hard and fast and quietly as I could, but I made the mistake of shifting into high gear. The shift sounded much like a gun being cocked and when the fox heard it, it dropped the dinner it had been craving right in the middle of the road and dashed off into the trees.

After I took this picture of the headless chicken the fox left behind, as well as a couple of close ups that might be a little too graphic for some readers, I moved down the road a ways and then waited to see if the fox would return.

It never did - not while I was there, but the mosquitoes found me and they just kept biting. Plus, cars kept coming by, maybe one every minute or two. The fox was not going to come back with all those cars coming by. So, after about 20 minutes, I shook off the mosquitoes and pedaled on home.

I felt kind of bad. The fox had worked hard to steal this chicken from someone. It was really looking forward to eating it. And then I had to come along and shift gears and make it think someone might be pointing a rifle at it.

Comments

[twain12]

poor chicken and i'm sorry for who owned this chicken, but i'm still rooting for the fox

[Shoshana]

I really like the first picture of the road with the rain coming down. Absolutely beautiful

[Logbook - Wasilla - Beyond]

Yea, I root for the fox, too.

[Suji]

Eeeks!