As it often happens in nature, you should never, ever takeanything for granted. The first thing to break out of the patternwere the feathers. The feather friends came as they wanted,which was completely different from what I expected. Then thefatal idea came to my mind to get on with fur. If I had suspectedhow it would end, I would have been sitting in the swamp waitingfor the birds as long as possible.Topic number one: elks in marshmarigolds. That is easy. Elks- there were some. Marigolds- therewere some as well. You need to know that the rhizomes andleaves of these plants are a real delicacy for the four-leggedinhabitants of swamps, which they consume in delight, wadingamong the spring backwaters. The only obstacle was the fact thatdespite all my struggles, I could not meet them in the same placeand at the same time. As a result, the marsh fawn faded and elkmoms hid in inaccessible swamps to give birth to the nextgeneration of weirdos in peace. I will cover the subject of theteddy bear expedition with a veil of silence, saying quietly that Icould not go on it... grrr. The only thing left for me to do was tobravely fight with the foxies, which was the thing I had a hugeappetite for. After less than an hour of searching, we found abeautiful burrow in a flowery meadow. We didn't even have towonder if it was inhabited. Right at its entrance, two red ballswere playing delightfully. There was nothing else to do but waitfor the afternoon light and start shooting. The redheads were stillso small that they should not be afraid of our discreet presence.In front of the burrow, single feathers and remains of boneslittered around clearly indicated that the toddlers were feastingon the prey brought by their mother. Over time, this mess willbecome bigger and bigger. This is what distinguishes a fox from abadger, which is exceptionally clean and regularly tidies the areaaround its apartment. After an almost perfect order around theburrow of extreme littering, you can probably guess who itsowner was. Emotionally, we completely ignored the first sign thatit would not be easy. The second one gave us a bit of food forthought, but was quickly muffled by the vision of wonderfully litfoxes playing on a small hill among flowers. The third was lurkingbehind our backs to finally finish us off, but more on this later.Theafternoon lookout session ended in a total bust. The little foxiesscuttled into the burrow. And although we hypnotised theentrance with all our power, no one dared to show up again.Maybe if an ant, a mosquito, or a black fly tingled me, I wouldsomehow move. But there was nothing. I froze motionlessly.Breathless, probably, and certainly totally thoughtless. Nothing!We gathered our cameras and with the tails between our legs,swearing like sailors, we decided to return at dawn. At four-thirtythe alarm clock ruthlessly roared to the whole house I'll GoBarefoot (that's the title of a pretty popular folk song). I onlymanaged to tell it that it must be crazy, as it's still too cold to gobarefoot anywhere. So, I got up. On the way between the bed andour Honda, I managed to put my shoes on, and off we went forNational Geographic-worthy photos.A few minutes after five, I sat down at the set-up camera, withmy teeth chattering rhythmically. After an hour I was able tochatter the whole gamut, after another thirty minutes I masteredhalf the anthem. Still nothing in front of the camera! When thefirst rays of the sun finally began to heat us gently, somethingquivered. A nose appeared in the hole, then an eye, and then thered ball moved towards us with a decisive step. One and a halfmeters in front of the lens, the redhead stopped and placed agood-sized poo. Then, by the same route, only a little faster hereturned to the burrow. It's simply fantastic – I already have theWildlife Photographer of the Year in my pocket. Winner in thewildlife category of ‘Fox Toilet’. Or actually ‘A Fox in the Toilet’.The subtle dawn passed like a golden dream and on the memorycard. It is a shame to talk about.At half-past seven we weredisturbed by a slight movement. The little ones, surprisingly,decided to tilt their heads out of the ground. One by one theystuck their noses towards us, pricked their ears, and after awhile, they ran to the hill we had noticed before to play. It took awhile for all six of them to take their plump bumps into the sun.As we usually do, we only rubbed our hands and threw ourselvesto the cameras with the intention of filling up the cards, when thefoxes, after the initial play and stretching, left our dream sceneone by one. After a few moments, the little ones spread acrossthe meadow like ants. One crawled almost like an earthworm onour legs, the other, Indiana Jones, boldly rammed the bushes. Twomore jumped up after their siblings. Only the sloths were left,curled up in the sunlit hole and even their ears could not be seen.However, this did not put us off at all. After all, how long can suchyoungsters stay away from the safe den? They will probably bedisturbed by something and will run back to its vicinity.Meanwhile,we watched as all four explorers frolic playfully in the meadow.Unfortunately, completely beyond the range of our lenses,something was clearly wrong! Delighted by the discovery of theburrow, we didn't even check where the other exits were. Afterall, it is always the case that the fox apartment has a number ofemergency exits! From one living room, which can be up to threemeters underground, these clever animals lead a whole complexof corridors and spare exits. The fox was once called cunning fora reason. It also outsmarted us and in what a style! I was entitledto an award for wool-gathering, not for my photos.I will notdescribe what the foxes did in the vicinity of the second entranceto the burrow, because it makes my blood boil. Let me justmention that immediately after this revealing thought, we startedcrawling to the frisky kids. Did this work? Well, I was successfulright after I almost knocked my teeth out with a tripod andblackened my eye with the camera while crawling, sweepingeverything I found beneath me with a net on the way. As a result,I reached the foxes as a decent scum of all weeds. Additionally,huffing and spitting with ants and various meadow vermin. Thereis nothing like a quiet, relaxing rest and hobby in nature!32 TRAVEL.LOVEPOLAND
story and photography by: Magdalena Sarat and Łukasz Łukasik33 TRAVEL.LOVEPOLAND
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