What Does the Fox Say?

While out birding sometime probably in May last year at one of my favorite wooded spots, I noticed movement on the hill in the woods ahead of me. There were four or five red fox kits chasing each other up and down a deer path halfway up the small ridge ahead of me. One or two scooted in and back out of what appeared to be a den there, and that’s when I noticed staring back at me, one of their parents. I was quite a distance away and had just crossed the stream below the hill, but she (I’ll say she, because I just sensed it was a protective mama) was staring at me staring at her through my binoculars.

I nodded my head as if to say, “sorry to bother you, mam,” and moved on. Though I looked for them later through the summer, I never saw them again. I’ve had quite a few good fox sightings in my life, but that was one of the coolest.

So, it was a broad theme this week, animals, either in the band’s name or in the title of the song, but what I found weird was that it was seriously difficult to find a women’s group named after an animal. There were the Pussycat Dolls, but I have them in mind for something else sometime soon. Kate Bush sings of going to sleep and dreaming of sheep and Tori Amos even has a song about oysters, but the pickings were slim for female related material this week. I guess men really are more like animals.

By the way, I apologize for this song if you haven’t heard it before, and if you have, I apologize even more profusely, but what a great finale for a week on animals, right? I had no idea where this song came from back in 2013 or 14, but suddenly everyone was singing in this annoying high pitch, “What does the FOX say?” At the time I couldn’t understand how this tune climbed the charts. It had to be a joke, right?

Well, yes, David. Yes, it was a joke, and that’s why it took off. I see that now that I’ve finally sat down and watched this goofy video and had a good giggle to myself. It was a busy week, I hope you have a lovely weekend ahead of you. Who knows what our next “accidental” theme will be on Jeff’s Song of the Day. Here’s the comedy duo Ylvis singing “The Fox.”

“Let’s Do It,” the Ballad of Barry and Freda

Some of my best friends in the world live outside of the US, and after two trips to Northern Ireland, I must have caught some kind of UK bug because most all the shows we watch and a number of musicians we like all come from overseas. Britbox could probably charge us double for our streaming service, but don’t tell them that, please.

Some of my favorite comedians are from somewhere in the British Isles as well (we’ll talk about the Nordic countries another time). The first time I heard Victoria Wood was in the early 2000’s, and I was sad to hear of her passing from cancer in 2016.

While American’s can get lost in some of the language differences between US and British lingo (boot for trunk, crisps for chips, chips for fries), today’s song is pretty easy to follow. If you need any help at all, the lyrics at the Genius website have some helpful notes you can check out by clicking here.

We had a lot of serious and heavy stuff hitting our eardrums this week with Valentine’s love songs, both happy and sad, so I wanted to bring a . . . let’s call it a change of pace to wrap up the week. Let’s not take this whole love song thing too seriously. A simple, older couple in northern England face the question of what to do with their evening. Freda has ideas, while Barry is looking for an escape plan.