The Fox Hunt

This past weekend was quite a weekend as the man and the woman who run the farm learned about the fox and oh boy did this place go on high alert.

There was not a lot of to-ing and fro-ing on the farmyard this weekend as the man and some of his friends were always about and they held guns in their hands and I think they wanted to shoot the fox.

The friends have been staying in the farmhouse so I have been unable to come in here and write on my weblog at night and charge the battery on my cellphone. They are gone now and they have laid some traps outside of the fences and the fox is still at large.

While the fox does present a threat to us, one of the main values of the COA has been very hard to maintain: All life is valued.

It is a difficult thing I must say - and I have just learned this word and that word is reconcile - it is a difficult thing to reconcile that the fox has a right to live and play out its part in the ecosystem of the planet but that we also have a right to live and play out our part and what it comes down to is that we just have to live and if necessary we have to fight.

I do not mean we have to be violent because sometimes to fight is to ensure your own safety and sometimes that means keeping yourself safe and secure and out of the actual physical part of the fight. To survive is simply winning the fight against death.

I did manage to speak with Carmel today after all the men had gone and the traps were set and we spoke for the first time in a few days and she believes that whatever is meant to happen will happen but I cannot just sit back and let my fate be decided by that and I told her so and she said to me that I was maybe not understanding her because she thinks that, while there is an element of fate to our lives we cannot ignore the opportunities that fate gives us to influence our own outcomes.

The circumstances have been determined, she said, but not the outcomes.

It sounds very smart but I have been thinking on it a lot and are not the circumstances the result of another series of outcomes? I do not think I have the language yet to debate her properly on this because she is a very smart little lamb but I am curious as to what you believe?

Are you able to influence the outcome of the events before you or is any action you take already part of some bigger design?

I have learned another word just now and that word is flummoxed and I think that is what I am at this point in time and I'm hoping you can help unflummox me, which I do not think is a word because there is a red line under it when I type but I will use it anyway because I think you know what I mean.