(CW: a pile of feathers photo ahead)

I love digging into the etymology of words and phrases. But, the world of AI has made searching for things on the internet no longer a fun pastime. How many times can one handle an AI summary that wants you to click into for more “info” that has culled from the previews of the first screen worth of entries?

Apparently my desire to do such a thing is very, very low.

Give me an encyclopedia set. Or a dictionary. A thesaurus. Anything but what is happening when I try a search query in 2026. Google thinks I want something other than the list of results. I don’t need a summary, I want to read the entire thing myself. I want to suss out a good lead. I want to dig into the dirt of the results and plant my own thoughts.

Hermana when we reunite soon please help me shut it off?! Tech support!

What started all of this? Well, it was me on a search to find out when the phrase “a fox guarding the hen house” emerged into the idiomsphere of this language you’re reading. The language I’m trying to somehow massage into something worthy of others’ engagement. The language in which I’m struggling to find the words to that which is a (the?) human condition - suffering.

How many times can the AI generated information linking the phrase to a (translated?) French book from the 16th century be parroted on people’s blogs? Or, one might suppose now my entry is going to be added to that list of “hits,” echoing something that someone once thought they heard one time that is now a fact because the world wide web deemed it so.

We are living in a disturbing and off kilter landscape of the advanced setting of the simulation, when most are simply novices. I see the entries saying the same thing but there is no link to the original source, no site gleaming as obviously credible. I’m gazing upon the infinite reflections bouncing inward like when two mirrors reflect each other, creating a portal that results in a repeated reflection over and over and over and over

and over.

But, my life is not one of only metaphor and analogy. The reason for my desire to reach the last repetition, the origin, is because we have been battling an actual fox at the ChicFinn. Not the idea of a fox guarding the hen house— a bone-in, fur and flesh fox. A fox who I am coming to know. I have observed her reddish brown coat, her dark legs. She is not a figment of a 16th century turn of phrase, she is in our prairie grass.

This fox has been spying on our brood of chickens. Out of sheer luck I have spotted it not once, but twice now. I say luck, because Studio Utopia where I spend the bulk of my days is windowless. I can see nothing but the paintings and the colors floating in my head here. To see anything in the prairie I must be outside of my studio.

A month ago, I caught sight of her from a window of the main floor of our house. By chance really, out of the corner of my eye and perhaps with a sense I cannot really name, I caught a glimpse of the predator in the yard.

And I have, against the orders of my doctors and at great cost to my compressed vertebrae, been the one to run out the front door, grab a pole, a stick, a disconnected flattened alumninum gutter piece to scare the fox when it bravely stalks near our chickens’ home.

And, it is I who has stared the fox directly in the eyes, willing a confrontation, wanting the thrill of a fight, the ecstasy of a violent release. I surprised myself with these emotions Thursday, before I had even learned the fox had successfully snatched one of my girls.

A pile of feathers.

Soft down.

Screaming roosters.

Scattered chickens.

This is not an idiom - to know what it means when the fox is guarding the hen house.

This is real life.

This is our life.

It’s funny how rural living has so many lessons to teach. These abstract concepts certainly hold meaning and it’s easy to see from where they come. The fox guarding the hen house is a dangerous phrase because anyone who has seen the tenacity of a fox knows there is no guarding the hen house. There is only slaughter, predator and prey occupying their assigned roles.

I’m tired of being diligently attuned to the possibility of the fox’s return. I don’t have the energy to do that and figure everything else out. But what other choice do I have? Accept the slaughter? Give up my hens to the pointy mouth of that fox? With her audaciously bushy tail? No, not I.

I don’t want any more loss around here, or elsewhere. And I am not really sure of what to do with any of this, other then to paint a fox into the painting I’m working on right now. Read the myths and fables of the fox. Learn about why and how the term “foxy” came about. That seems like a worm hole I’d like to follow via a card catalog.

The fox guarding our hen house is persistent.

But so too, am I.