This morning in Joliet while biking to the city’s public library, I had the 2nd urban fox sighting of my life. The first dated back to my years in Chicago, when once in the early 2000s while driving home after teaching a night class, I saw a red fox (Vulpes vulpes) cross Lawrence Avenue, right along the Chicago River’s North Branch.

Today I was biking on a quiet side street, listening to the gentle throb of the early August cicadas, when a very slight rustling on my right caught my ear.

I kept pedaling but turned, and saw a beautiful adult red fox lope through a front yard, then turn down a grassy alley. I never made eye contact, as the encounter lasted all of five seconds — but got a good look at this splendid creature’s color and form, especially the distinctive tail.

It’s good to know that there’s at least one fox on the prowl on Joliet’s West Side. (For you locals, this was on Mason Avenue, between Midland and Larkin Avenues — an area of ranch houses and ample, though not huge, yards.) For more reflections on the presence of foxes in urban environments, see this 2009 article from Chicago Wilderness.