2 hours ago
8
It is late afternoon, and I’m standing before the living room’s big bay window, with its commanding view of the street, when I hear the middle one coming down the stairs and turning the corner to the kitchen.
“Look at this,” I say. I can hear the reluctance in the slowing of his footsteps as he changes course.
“What,” he says, drawing up alongside me, laptop under his chin.
“Over there, by the blue car,” I say. He cranes his neck.
“A fox eating from a bin,” he says.
“I watched him tip it gently on its side,” I say. “Then he undid the latch with one paw and pulled the bag out with his teeth.”
“Huh,” he says.
“Then he spread the contents out across the road, and now he’s helping himself,” I say.
“And you just watched,” he says.
“It’s the circle of life, innit,” I say.
“I don’t think that’s …”
The dog bounds into the room and leaps on to the sofa between us. As the sofa skids forward a foot and collides with the window sill, the dog is already standing with its front paws on the back, watching the fox and whining.
“You’re not allowed,” I say.
There are more foxes out there than ever, operating with unprecedented levels of nonchalance. While the dog is vigilant about patrolling the back garden, a section of freshly collapsed brick wall makes access pretty easy. It would be fair to say that when it comes to garden disruption, the fox has now replaced my enemy the squirrel. Replaced, or maybe eaten.
“Something has chewed the thumbs off my gardening gloves,” I say to my wife as we are weeding different beds one Saturday.
“That’s the fox,” she says.
“I know it’s the fox,” I say, “because he’s hidden the gloves inside this half-empty bag of compost.”
“You can’t just leave things like that out overnight,” she says.
“I used to be able to leave things like that out,” I say.
“Not any more,” she says.
“I miss the squirrel,” I say.
Because the fox’s damage comes at a markedly higher cost than the squirrel’s (the squirrel used to steal my tomatoes; the fox bit clean through my garden hose just below the tap) I have adopted a cautious policy: in the back garden, the fox and I are enemies; out front, we’re just wary neighbours, rubbing along together for the sake of an easy life.
Although I suspect the fox is also stealing my delivery parcels off the doorstep, I’m not going to escalate without proof. I don’t think the fox knows that front-garden me and back-garden me are the same person, and I want to keep it that way. A fox could eat your brake lines while you sleep.
One night I’m sitting alone in the kitchen when the dog hares down the stairs, runs past me and presses its nose to the glass of the garden door. As we’re both peering out into the darkness the security light mounted on my office shed snaps on, illuminating the fox in the middle of the lawn.
I let the dog out. The dog chases the fox into the gap between my office and the garden wall. From that crevice terrible noises issue. The fox is apparently giving no quarter, and the dog hasn’t got enough room to turn around. Eventually the fox appears on the shed roof, and the dog manages to back out of the gap.
“Good work,” I say as the dog slinks in through the door. “That should keep the new hose safe for a few days.”
Later that week the dog and I pull up to the house in the car to find the fox sitting in the middle of the road. The dog goes crazy, running from the front seat to the back.
“Be cool,” I say. The dog barks wildly. The fox remains seated.
I attach the dog’s lead for the short walk from the kerb to the front door. The dog strains on two legs, growling and trying to wrench the lead from my hands. The fox yawns, stretches and wanders to the school gates at the end of the road, slipping between the bars.
“I think we got away with that one,” I say. “No thanks to you.”
That evening, armed with a list with beer at the top, I put on a jacket and head to the shops. Halfway down the road I see the fox at a distance coming up the pavement toward me. I don’t deviate from my path; neither does he. I pull out my phone and look at it casually, glancing up only as the fox draws near.
“All right?” I say as we pass one another.
The fox gives me a look that says: can’t complain.
