Seeing a fox
A fox crossing the road or freezing at a field's edge is a quick thrill. When hunting, foxes seem to aim their pounce with the earth's magnetic field, an apt picture of steering by an inner compass.
What it may mean
Watch a red fox hunt in a snowy field and you will see it stop, tilt its head, then leap high and dive nose-first into the snow. In the Czech Republic, researchers recorded hundreds of these pounces and found that foxes jumping toward the northeast caught their prey far more often than those jumping in other directions. One explanation is that foxes sense the earth's magnetic field and use it like a range finder, lining up a sound with an invisible line. Whatever the full story, the image is striking: an animal aiming by a sense nobody can see. Plenty of us aim the same way, by a gut feeling, a long habit of reading people, or a value that lines up our choices. Lore around the world has made the fox a herald of rain, death or good fortune; this one is simply a fine hunter at work.
Depending on how you saw it
A fox crossing the road at dusk
Foxes travel chiefly at dawn, dusk and night, and roads cut across their hunting routes. One crossing your headlights is most likely heading for a field or a hedge it knows. Which of your routines would surprise someone who only sees you in daylight?
A scream in the dark in winter
From December to February, foxes are mating, and their screams in the dark can sound alarmingly human. Plenty of listeners hear one for the first time and fear the worst. Which alarming sound in your life turned out to be someone simply calling for company?
A fox in the middle of a city
Red foxes live in many big cities, using parks, rail lines and backyards. They have learned the rhythm of streets better than most visitors. Where have you adapted to a place so well that you forgot it was once strange to you?
Fox kits playing outside a den
In late spring, young foxes tumble and wrestle near the den for hours. Play is how they learn to pounce and to judge each other. What have you learned through play that no lesson could have taught?
Why it happens in nature
Red foxes hunt chiefly at dawn, dusk and night and are common in towns as well as countryside. They find small rodents by sound and catch them with a high pounce; a Czech study of almost 600 jumps found that northeast-facing pounces succeeded most often, possibly because foxes sense the magnetic field. Their loud screams are most often heard in the winter mating season.
What folk beliefs say
Persia
In Persia, a fox barking at night was a sign of rain.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 635. View the page
Korea
In Korea, a fox that barked with its face turned toward you was a sign that someone you knew was going to die.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 635. View the page
Maine, United States
A fox shrieking and barking was taken as a warning of danger to be heeded, and a 1903 collection tells of a man in Maine who was killed felling a tree just after a fox shrieked near him.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 635. View the page
To reflect on
What invisible sense do you aim by when you make a decision, and how often do you follow it?