How They Die 

(This incident occurred August 2, 1998) 

There is a family of red foxes that lives in the woods nearby. Last evening, our neighbor saw one of the kits calmly trotting into her barn. This morning, she found the fox in an empty horse stall, curled up against one wall, as if asleep. But the fox was not asleep; the fox was dead. There is a wound on one leg that may have been the cause of death. The warden reports it is not unusual for foxes to select a barn as a place to die.

But here’s the thing that’s getting to me. All the evidence at the scene suggests this fox died calmly and easily, as if it considered death as natural a process of life as hunting field mice, feasting on wild blueberries, prancing down a country road, or being born. There are no signs of frantic digging, scratching, wall climbing, or other desperate behavior. This fox was not trying to escape its fate, and it did not struggle against it. Instead, it seems that some time yesterday, this fox realized somewhere within that it was going to die last night, and so it found an appropriate site, and, without any fanfare, it simply did so.

Compare that performance with how any of us would have reacted to similar news. We would have fought tooth and nail! What is the difference between us and the fox? Is it perhaps that we perceive death as the opposite of life, and so we fear it terribly; but the fox recognizes death as the opposite of birth, and knows that life precedes birth and continues past death; and so it takes death in stride.

For anyone in search of a meditation practice, permit me to suggest: Consider the foxes, and how they die.