About a mile and a half into my ride today I came upon a full grown fox. He was just ambling along in someone’s yard. No worries. Never even turned his head in my direction as I rode past.
Fast forward about 12 miles. I am riding south along the Dyke Marsh area on the Mount Vernon Trail. The area to my left is filled with trees along the edge of the marsh. I hear a barking sound. Another fox. It’s off a ways. I can’t see it, but I can hear it clear as day. As I ride the sound follows along. It gets louder. I am half expecting the fox to pop out from behind a tree. After a half mile, the barking stops and I pedal onward.
I continue south on the trail. I am about 3/4ths of a mile from the trailhead at Mount Vernon when there is a burst of activity immediately to my left. It’s a bunch of vultures, perhaps 8 or 10, packed together. I startled them and several of the beasts flew up into the air, two directly in front of me.
Not wanting to crash and become dessert, I focused on keeping on the trail and never did discover what the vultures were eating. My guess from the number of birds is that it was a deer. Ew.
I did a little research. It’s a good thing I didn’t stop to further investigate the wake (that’s what you call a group of vultures eating together) because vultures have been known to puke on people who upset them.
And now a word from Mutual of Omaha.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 
I will admit one of the things I miss the most about people ditching quarantine is that all the animals I used to see on my late night drives to Rosslyn are gone. I used to see fox after fox and deer after deer, particularly around May and June, but ever since the summer, traffic increases mean way fewer animals to spot.