By Bob Stickley

Recently my grandson and I were doing a little shopping and were heading back home. As we started up the ramp to Alabama 24 west, a very large red fox darted in front of our car and slowly crossed a section of a grassy hill where the road behind Wal Mart comes to a dead end.

This was a monster of a fox. Normally, we don’t much but grey fox here in north Alabama.

The fox was curious and in no hurry to get away from us. He crossed into an area behind the new Russellville Fire Department before disappearing from sight.

This reminded me of another episode I had with a red fox many years ago, when I was about 13-years-old. It was during the summer, about a month into our summer vacation from school.

My brother, Ron, and I were helping a neighbor of ours with chores around the farm that included milking 32 cows and putting up hay all day.

This particular day was a Saturday, so all we had to do was milk cows in the morning. We were then free to enjoy some free time. As we started home on our gravel road — as there were very few roads in the county that were black topped — when suddenly a large red fox ran across the road about 20 yards in front of us.

He then crossed into the cow pasture by our house and into a hole, which we assumed to be a fox den.

So, curious as young boys are, we decided to seek out Mr. red fox from his den. We called a couple of our buddies to come and help us in our search for the fox.

We all got shovels and started digging into the hole Mr. fox went into. We labored all day digging for the fox with no luck at all.

Finally at about 4 p.m. we decided to give up our search since it was time do our milking chores again, so we patched all the dirt back into the hole we had dug.

As we turned back to the house, not more than 30 yards from us was a big pile of rocks with Mr. fox sitting on top of it.

Foxes are smarter than men — at least this one was.