When I was growing up on the farm, there were always red foxes in the woods.  They didn't bother us, probably because we only grew crops, and we had no animals like chickens or rabbits for them to steal.  Thus, we didn't harass them.  Maybe that's why there were so many foxes around our farm.

Anyway, I remember one fox who seemed less afraid of people than the others.  However, it would never let me get closer than 30 feet.  But that was close enough for me to leave a dish of milk and have it know that I was leaving it as a gift, if you will.  At the time, I just thought it would be cool to be able to actually get the fox tame enough to pet it.

I had to be careful not to get caught; my parents would have skinned me, I'm sure, for trying to tame a wild animal.  So, it was fortunate that this fox hung around some trees and bushes, where we both were hidden.  And I skimmed some milk from the cats (it was one of my chores to give the cats their milk), and just made up whatever story to explain where I was for a half hour most days - such as "playing with the cats".  I was careful not to spend more than 20 or 30 minutes in any given day with the fox.

It took a few days before the fox would trust me enough to even drink the milk.  I think it was at least a couple of weeks of me staying nearer and nearer to the dish before I could reach out and almost touch it - but that one time really scared it off, and it was at least a whole week before I even saw it again.  It was back to square one.

This time, I just stayed near the dish as it drank the milk, and didn't make any more movements or gestures toward it.  But, I would sit still nearer and nearer the dish each day, until finally I had the dish at my feet.  That time, the fox took at least twenty minutes before he walked up and actually started drinking.  I had heavy gloves on in case of a bite, and ever so slowly I moved my hand over to let him sniff it.  He shied away a bit, but he didn't panic this time.  I kept my hand still for a few minutes, over the milk dish, and it was the fox who sniffed my hand first - rather than me reaching out to touch it.  Then, he allowed me to actually stroke him on his side a couple of times.

After that, it was perhaps a month - and getting into winter - before he would really let me pet him.  And it was not long after that point that the weird thing happened.

Once, while petting the fox, he got up and started sniffing around the snow, and then began to lift his tail and squat just in front of me, about to relieve himself.  It was just a spur of the moment thing - I didn't really plan it, and I'm not sure what really motivated me at the time.  It was like this was a rare once in a lifetime chance to do something weird and exotic (in my really small world at the time), and I had only seconds to make the decision.  I felt that if I just sat there and watched, I would come to regret not taking some action and not getting the chance again.  So I just whipped off my gloves, cupped my hands under its tail, and waited to catch it.

I guess the milk I had been feeding it gave it a watery stool, and within a few moments, my hands had been almost filled.  Some of it even spurted onto the cuff of my coat and exposed shirt sleeve.  This was a fairly large fox, at least twenty pounds if not more, and he was pretty chubby.  After his relief, he was actually noticeably skinnier.

I wasn't expecting it to be that messy, but I didn't pull my hands away, and kept them still until it was done.  The sensation of the brownish-orange fluid spurting into my hands, the gurgling, bubbling sound, and the stool's warmth in the cold air and its liquidity gave me a strange pleasure.  I kept the pool in my hands for a few minutes before dumping it and cleaning my hands off in the snow.  I decided that I liked it, and would try this again.  However, this turned out to be a rare occasion, just two or three more times in the following months was I able to do this again, but it wasn't quite as exciting as the first time.  The fox would usually relieve itself elsewhere before I showed up.  And if it was 30 below, this was out of the question, so I only tried this on warmer days.  I remember once going to visit the fox, I was nearing the bushes were it usually would wait for its milk.  Just before I got there, I could hear that gurgling noise and was able to see the very end of it.  I actually felt disappointed seeing that orangeish pool in the hole of snow that it had melted, and that I had missed by maybe 30 seconds.

The solution to the mess was a good 10 to 15 minutes of washing my hands in hot water and scrubbing with antibacterial soap.  But it took overnight before the smell was really off of my hands.  My answer to the questioning about the smell when I first came inside (as it was noticed by my parents), was that I had fallen and landed in some deer stuff in the field.  And I tried to clean off my coat and shirt as much as I could.  I wonder if they suspected me at all.  Maybe it was a good thing that I was only able to do this a few times - how many times can a person trip and land with their hands in animal stuff?  I also worried that somebody would follow me and wonder what I was doing, or worse, catch me in the act.

But as far as I know, I was never caught or even had anyone secretly observe me doing this.  And by spring, one day the fox disappeared and I never saw him again.

After the fox, I tried this with the farm cats, it wasn't nearly as "exciting", so I only did it maybe once in a while through high school, and I never worried about going beyond that point.