missed focus?

did autofocus grab something besides the kit? it seems almost out of focus but my eyes have really gotten bad.

It looks OK to me, but... my eyes are starting to get bad also.

To me, it looks like the lower and closer fox is in focus. Success!

I see the whiskers, and looking at the pine needles one can see the band of what's "in focus".

You've included the aperture setting with your EXIF data. But to determine the depth of field (DOF) we would also need to know the focal length and how close you were to the subject. If, for example, your focal length was 200mm and your distance was 15' then the DOF would be about 7" thick. I'm thinking that you have about that much or maybe just a bit more DOF so the lens could have been zoomed a little bit less, say 150mm, which would give a full foot of DOF.

200mm or very close to it. i'm using a 70-200 f/4 with a sigma mc-11 so it doesn't read the lens when it loads the data. i was maybe 30 feet from them. thanks