Ooops... thud!

I love this picture:

(I found it, and the other photos in this post, at http://actinglikeanimals.com/)

In fact, I think I might want a print of it up on my office wall.  First of all, it's outstanding wildlife photography. Mad props to whoever captured this moment.  But secondly, the poor fox's overt lack of coordination makes me feel like I am not alone.  Not everyone can be graceful all the time.  In fact, some of us experience lots of these moments. 

The question I am left with is, do foxes feel embarrassment?  My dogs do not appear to, but they're complete idiots.  Our old dog used to act embarrassed every spring when we gave him a haircut, as if he felt naked.  He'd hide for about 24 hours afterward, even from my father who was just about his most favorite person ever.  Thankfully he'd get over it.  My cats certainly seem to get embarrassed when they, say, fall off a shelf and land in the dogs' water bowl. 

Well, I take that back - one of my cats is too dense and loopy to exhibit any sign of embarrassment, ever.  She's just Not Quite Right.  By way of example, a couple of nights ago I shouted frantically down the stairs to my husband that it smelled like something had caught on fire.  He replied calmly that, no, no one was on fire, but Sneakers had casually rested her tail against the glass on the wood stove door for a few moments and what I smelled was her singed fur.

Apparently Sneakers never appeared to notice anything was wrong, and casually wandered off with her usual vacuous expression.  Her tail was sort of crunchy at the tip for a day or so, but didn't appear to be painful, which is good.  But dang, what part of 300+ degrees radiating off its surface failed to communicate "too hot to touch" to that silly cat?  My cousin's response to that story was "Some animals never really get it.  In nature, they call it survival of the fittest."  That about sums up Sneakers.  She's a competitor for the feline Darwin Awards.

Anyway, she's the one who falls off things all the time and never, ever demonstrates an iota of embarrassment. 

So, to summarize, my limited experience leads me to guess that perhaps some foxes - like some cats, dogs, and humans - get embarrassed, while some are just too dense (or gracious) to exhibit embarrassment.  Perhaps the photographer could tell us which category this fellow "fell" into (pardon the pun).

That web site, by the way, has other wonderfully humorous animal photos.  A few of my favorites:

Awesome.