Frederick Alphonso Fox, Fred Fox as he likes to be known, was a typical Red Fox except Fred's tail was about three times the size of the normal Red Foxes tail. It was a beauteous sight to see him run across a field with that enormous tail flowing in the breeze. The tail was a beauteous sight to you and I but was or could be a big problem for Fred Fox and at times was downright dangerous. Matter of fact around noon on Tuesday the 26th of January 1999, was the day in Fred Fox's life which if he lives to be 99 years old, he will never forget.

Now yesterday was the 26th of January and it was a typical beautiful Wyoming day, bright sunshine, and no clouds and no wind, oh maybe a slight breeze. That is until a little after noon when a front moved through; It went from the low 40s, sun-shine and nice to 10 degrees, snow and 54 mph winds. To you people who live in the flat lands when someone tells you that the temperature dropped so fast that you could watch it go down, you always sigh in disbelief and go "oh yeah, happens all the time" all the while thinking, boy what a tale teller he is. Well a fifty degree drop in less than an hour is normal, so yesterday when it dropped over twenty degrees in less than five minutes was a so what event to us of the hinterlands of Wyoming. But forget the Editorial gobbledy gook and on with the story.

About noon yesterday Joe Whatsitz went out to the track to practice, it was the first time he had been afforded the chance to ride since the first of the year. And of course he was looking forward to the thrill of getting on the bike and seeing if he could get those two doubles just South of the Tabletop down pat. But before he could go riding he had to stop off at Sam's and buy a few groceries for Annie, his wife. One of the items on his list was buttermilk, so what is so great or spectacular about buttermilk any way? Nothing except the ones of you who shop at Sam's know that when you buy there you don't just buy a pint or quart of milk, you buy a 2 1/2 gallon jug of milk. See Sam's is a sister to WalMart and it sells in family or restaurant sizes; OK so what? Nothing except Joe bought a jug of buttermilk and it along with the other groceries he bought were in the rear of his pickup with his bike and gear. Oh, I forgot, at Sam's they do not bag you purchases, you are responsible for that and they have a large supply of used boxes up front for you to put your purchases into and then 'tote' them out to your vehicle.

Well Joe had done that and the milk was there beside the boxes of other foodstuff. Since Joe was in a hurry he sorta threw the groceries into the back of the pickup not noticing that there was a piece of glass in the bed where he had broken a pop bottle the other day. And guess what. The buttermilk was put on that piece of glass and made a little hole in the bottom of the container. Not a big hole just a small one which was unnoticeable to most unless you looked real close.

Being in a hurry to get started as soon as he got to the track, Joe unloaded his bike, got his riding gear on and hit the track.

Fred Fox was stretched out over on the South side of the Tabletop sunning himself since he had just finished devouring a great breakfast, two plump field mice. All at once he heard this confounded noise, a ring a ding ding, whoppy bopppy whine a rooo which immediately startled him so he jumped straight up in the air and when he came back down took off in full flight in the opposite direction.

After he had run a couple hundred yards he stopped and upon seeing the cause of the problem, 'a two legs' (man) on 'two wheeled noise maker' (Motocross bike), Fred proceeded to trot over toward the pits. By this time Joe was on the track and taking a warm up lap, so intent on what he was doing he didn't notice the big Red Fox tail going across the track (as Sherlock Holmes would say, "the plot begins to thicken).

FF trotted across the pits and as he went by Joe's pickup he smelled something good, something he had never smelled before, so he stopped under the pickup and saw something white on the ground. He licked at it and wow it tasted good, so he lapped up all there was on the ground and then started looking for the source.

He looked up and saw that it was dripping from the bed of the pickup so he went around and hopped into the bed of the pickup and started looking for the source. It did not take long for him to locate the leaking jug of buttermilk; and it took even less time for Fred Fox to start lapping up this delicious nectar.

After Fred had lapped up what had run out his appetite had only been whetted so he started nudging the jug; when nothing happened he tried harder and as frustration set in he bit the corner of the jug real hard. And oh boy did he get results; the buttermilk started running out faster than Fred Fox could lap it up.

In dashing around in the bed of the truck trying to get all of the buttermilk Fred Fox knocked over the box of groceries, breaking the box of eggs, six dozen, ripping the bread sack open. These little things didn't phase Fred Fox for he was on a mission, to drink all the buttermilk before it ran out of the truck bed and onto the ground where it would be absorbed by the dry earth.

Needless to say before long Fred Fox had completely destroyed all the groceries plus had gotten Joe's clothes all covered with a mixture of buttermilk eggs and other stuff; but to top it off Joe's new Justin Cowboy boots were full of the goopy mixture.

Now this had been going on for about thirty minutes and all the while Joe had been out riding and having a grand time. Heck he had cleared those two sets of doubles four consecutive times without bobbling once. Joe was getting tired so he headed for the pits for a little rest and a soda pop and that double Twinkie he had bought at Sam's.

As Joe pulled off the track it was a little after noon, he had a couple hours left and all seemed normal and of course it was a gorgeous day, gorgeous and great until he got close to his truck. What on earth was that in the bed of his truck, a big Red something scurrying and jumping around back there, what could it be? Then all at once he clearly saw that the back of his truck was one gigantic mess and everything was amiss.

Joe jumped off his bike and just let it roll and fall over, he started screaming and yelling at that blamed Fox. Get outta here, scram, git, as soon as I get my gun you're a dead Fox.

This noise startled Fred Fox when he heard Joe screaming so he immediately looked around and started to look for his best avenue of escape. He jumped out of the truck and started East toward Windmill Road, for he knew two legs could not run in those big boots they wore and he could go through the fence, across the road and get away without much effort.

Fred Fox had gotten about halfway across the pits toward the fence when all at once something hit him(the weather front) and sent him tumbling, tumbling head over heels, this violent thing didn't stop. As he rolled he rolled into a garbage can that was on its side, as he rolled into the garbage can he rolled up and since he had so much speed he went up into the air and sailed up, up and still upwards. As that monster started to hit him it started to snow, snow very hard; so here was Fred Fox up in the air in the midst of a snowstorm just soaring Eastward.

It seemed like an eternity to Fred Fox but actually it had only been a few seconds but in this few seconds Fred Fox had been carried across Windmill, down across Ridge and all the way to College Drive. When the air current took a down draft and the velocity of the wind dropped enough that Fred Fox was no longer airborne.

But as quirks of fate do have it sometimes, Fred Fox was slowly dropped into a little cattle-watering pond down on the East End of Pershing Boulevard. Fred Fox hit with a mild kersplash and as he hit he was up and running; matter of fact he was running so hard that he ran right across the top of the water in that pond and didn't slow when he hit dry ground.

Fred Fox was not sure where he was but he just ran North until he was all the way to the Torrington Road, when he slowed down and found an old burrow and holed up. He slept for two complete days so when he awoke he was famished; but when he realized he was hungry he remembered the delicious nectar, buttermilk, which had caused his perils. He thought about that for a while and determined that if he ever came across that stuff again he would walk way around it cause it must have been some powerful stuff to mess him up that bad.

Joe spent two hours cleaning out his truck, then had to go buy new clothes and more groceries, but who would believe that a Fox had caused all this.