McHenry County Blog

The geese on the green between the club house and Country Club Drive got noisily nervous.

All of a sudden a big hawk swooped toward the patio eating area of the Crystal Lake Country Club last night.

“A hawk,” I said too loudly.

The young people at the table next to us looked up.

One saw something and spread the word to the others.


Standing up, I saw over the hedge this teenage fox.

Not a newborn, but not full grown either.

I changed lenses on my camera.



Our waitress said he would have come up on the patio, if the kids had not been making so much noise.

She said that there was a mother, who limped, and three of her little ones.

This probably was not the fox who did a balancing act on our home's fence earlier this summer.

Labels: Crystal Lake Country Club, Fox

Looking out into our back yard I saw a fox coming from the north along our neighbor's fence.

I grabbed my camera and headed for the sun porch.

He went toward the fence along Lake Avenue and leaped on top.

The traffic was pretty heavy, so back in the yard he jumped.

Where to go.

Back where he came from?

I saw him hid behind the day lilies and went out in the yard thinking, “Foxes don't attack humans, do they?”

The next thing I saw was the fox on the south side of Lake Avenue.

He was running east, carrying something in his mouth.

I certainly did not center the camera.

I just pointed and shot.

He dropped the little creature and kept running, so I went out on the road to try to get a picture of it.

By the time I got there, he had doubled back and picked it up.

The pictures of the fox on the other side of the street turned out to be on the very edge of the lower right hand side of the frame.

I've enlarged them, but they are very fuzzy.

The one on top of the fence turned out pretty good, though.

I'm told there is a family living on the Crystal Lake Country Club, as well as one near the old sewage plant east of McHenry Avenue.


All the while Keely Cat was standing at the glass porch door wondering why he couldn't come out at join the fun.

This part of Lakewood is in the watershed of the Fox River, by the way.

Labels: Crystal Lake, Fox, Lake Avenue, Lakewood