How did the fox die? If it was natural causes, I think it’s strange and very American to characterize nature as inherently cruel and at odds with survival. Fox lives at the top of the food chain and must eventually give back to it, it is the deal it makes with all its neighbors. The fox lived and died exactly how it was designed to and lived the best life it could. It died in its own community and will feed the soil that fed its food chain. That’s more than I can say of myself. Wild animals live the best lives I can imagine; they are never severed from their true inclinations and forced to work some pointless job that creates global waste and misery. It might be hard for us to imagine, but the fox savors its life, even with its apparent hardships. It’s okay to be sad about death from your human pov, but death is just another natural part of life, and often a mercy at that…. I rejoice with the natural cycle.
Ps, if it makes you feel any better, during death from exposure, you have the illusion of being warm again before you pass. It’s one of the more merciful ways to die in the wild.
2 I live in the most exploited and intensely farmed regions of Italy. I see more dead animals than alive ones and the air stinks of manure and death in the summer. I did not say nature is cruel I said these lands are cruel not by nature of course, but by design. I see roadkill all the damn time and I found her on the side of the road painting a picture of what could’ve happened.
I don’t think the fox lived and died how it was supposed to. This fox lived scared and fleeing cars in an adverse environment where trees are sparse and cut down to erect Amazon storehouses. This fox lived in the few hours of the night where humans sleep and headlights are fewer. This fox lived in a fucked up ecosystem that thought of her as vermin that sometimes steals chickens and got disposed of as if she was a biohazard after she died.
You dont know anything about me and what it means to live in this place that sees nature as dirty and a nuisance or that worse doesn’t see it just drives over it without noticing. I’ve lived here all my life and it’s a kind of pain so acute that gnaws at your insides constantly.
I am writing a whole thesis on human anthropomorphism of nature I know very well that what takes must give and that we all return to soil. She did not, she’s in a plastic bag in a junkyard right now and that fills me with existential dread.