July 14, 2014--Vixens

I have no idea how we go to talking about plurals.

Sometimes, always at the best dinner parties (and this one was the best) conversations wander. In this case from world religions to education reform to caring for aging mothers.

But with a stretch, all three are related.

In most belief systems one is taught to honor parents and care for them in old age while looking back on how mothers were our first educators. And if one's mother, as in my case, was also professionally a teacher, well, you see, subjects can wander but they are usually free-associatively connected.

But how we got to plurals is another matter.

I think it began when a guest mentioned that earlier in the day he had seen a fox sniffing across our hosts' rolling lawn. "Two, in fact," he said, "Two foxes."

I don't know what possessed me to suggest, "Not foxes," I smiled, "but two fox."

He looked at me skeptically. He is well educated and knowledgable about many things, including the arcane. "I think," he said gently (he's from Kentucky where disagreements can range from dangerous to gentlemanly), "I think the plural is foxes." I was happy to see that he continued to smile.

I say this about disagreements because earlier in the evening someone had reminded me that officials in Kentucky may still be asked if they ever engaged in a dual. And with a tall glass of superb bourbon in my system, knowing that, I was taking no chances.

"I'm glad no one here is bonded to a smart phone," another guest said, "We'd be tempted to look it up and that would be the end of this interesting discussion." I wasn't sure if he was teasing me. That's Kentuckian too--teasing so subtly that it's hard to know.

"Sometimes I like to wallow in uncertainty," I said, attempting to sound metaphysical since one of the dinner guests, a great person, is a leading authority on the metaphysical and mystical. Not the same thing, she and I had earlier agreed.

"I think the foxes I saw," he emphasized the plural, "were a mother and a baby."

"You mean a vixen and her kit, cub, or pup," someone else suggested.

"A what?" I blurted, the bourbon circulating.

"Vixen."

"Vixen?"

"Yes, that's the name for female foxes." That plural again.

"And so fox babies are called kits, cubs, or pups?" I managed to work in my version of the plural, the singular, suggesting it is also the plural--like moose.

"That's right," he said with a sense of triumph. "Just like male ferrets are hobs, females jills, and babies are also kits--like foxes.

His wife showed some signs of impatience but Rona, totally intrigued, asked, "So you too must do crossword puzzles?"

"In fact, he's addicted to them," his wife said.

"Keeps the mind young," he said. Which his is.

And so it went until my dinner partner and I returned to talking about how Joseph Campbell had influenced our lives through his lectures and writings about world religions, seeking, searching for, and ferreting out (sorry) their histories and interconnections.

"And there's Jessie Weston," I said.

"From Ritual to Romance," she said, "I too love that book. It had a profound influence on me in college. About pagan influences on Christianity. If we read it now we might find it a little simplistic but back then . . ."

"For me that was a hundred years ago," I said.

"Maybe only half that," she said, making me immediately feel better. Which she is quite expert at.

Early the next morning, without needing to make a quip about not wanting to be connected to too much connectivity, I googled "names of male, female, and baby animals?"

When Rona woke, after coffee and listening to the recently-deceased Paul Horn on Pandora, I could no longer contain my enthusiasm about what I had been learning.

"Did you ever wonder," I asked, why in so many languages people have assigned specific names to male and female animals?"

Rona squinted at me, still in a state on endorphins from Horn's new-age sound. I raced on, "Take hawks for example. We have lots of them circling here. Males are called tiercels, females hens, and babies eyas."

"E-what's?"

"Eyas, if I'm pronouncing it correctly."

She shrugged. "And squirrels," I said, "also many here--are unlikely called bucks, does, and kits."

"Squirrels and deer have the same names? Sounds crazy." I was pleased to see that Rona was starting to get into it. "At least they don't call squirrel kits fawns."

"You see what I mean?"

"What you mean? No, I don't."

"How all this is really unnecessary. Why not just call a male ferret that--a male ferret--and not a, what was it?"

"A hob." It was now Rona's turn to smile. "I'll bet it's in Sunday's crossword puzzle."

"For humans it's just men or males or women or females. And all babies are children and maybe kids."

"Like goats," Rona said. "Kids," she added in case I missed her jab.

"And billies," I said, "Also a name for goat babies."

"Maybe there are all these names to torment crossword-puzzlers."

"Or just, in language-building terms, out of a sense of play."

"Could be because we're animals too. And many animals just seem to want to have fun."