Fourth Day of Christmas (and yet another reason not to get chickens)

With this guy out and about in the neighborhood, the Four Calling Birds had better watch their backs.  A few days ago I let Allie out in front, as I often do, for a few seconds to quickly do her business.  As soon as she stepped onto the grass, she saw the fox in this picture (or his identical twin) trotting up the street right in front of our house.  Now Allie never runs away, but she took off like a flash across our lawn and chased the fox across the street.  As soon as the fox ran under the cow gate which is directly across from our house, Allie (finally) turned around and came home.  (Of course, the whole time I was frantically yelling at her to come back.)  It was all a matter of seconds, but the two best parts of the story were that 1) Allie came back pretty quickly (and safely), and 2) that the fox ran away from her.  Late this morning, John, Brad, and I were returning from some errands and we saw the fox in our side lawn and were able to get this picture of him (or her).