The deep, white layer of frost on the 10th January covered almost everything that I might see and write about, but it couldn’t help revealing something. In a narrow line along the shelf at the back of our conservatory were some small, delicate canine prints. I can’t always distinguish a fox print from a dog print, but there was no mistaking these; narrow pads with the side toes set well back and the registration blurred from the hair between the toes. What a fox was doing round there I don’t know but round there it had most definitely been.
I still haven’t worked out the foxes in our garden. I’d always assumed that they commute in from out of town, taking their chances on crossing Salters Lane, but 2025 turned into the year of the fox, which had me questioning that. In January a pair of them spent the afternoon basking in the sunshine on the allotments at the back of our house. They disappeared after that until April when just the vixen appeared. She was grey and tatty with paps that appeared large enough to require the services of a milkmaid. She was there every day, at all times of the day and we would often look at each other in a rather blasé way from opposite ends of the allotment. For a couple of months she was carrying a very nasty limp, so I figured that her cubs must be hidden somewhere nearby but I never did find the earth, despite checking under all the sheds on the allotments. We never saw any cubs either and as her paps shrunk we assumed that she had lost them. Then, in June, a fox appeared that I casually assumed from its size was her, until I noticed the slightly more rounded muzzle and the shiny, freshly unwrapped coat. The next morning the female was asleep in the sun in the next garden, “the cheek of it”, as my neighbour put it. I rattled the cat biscuit box but she was in no hurry to stir, though a little later both mother and cub were in our garden eating peanuts and cat biscuits. Or at least the mother was; the cub was trying its best to eat the garden gnome.
Despite having recovered from its limp, the female disappeared a month later. The cub still came round and graduated from gnomes to cat biscuits but it no longer came in the day and soon I couldn’t tell if the fox on the trail camera was it or some other. I have no idea what happened to the vixen; there was never any tell-tale red fur on nearby roads and if she had died on the allotments or nearby gardens then the smell could hardly have gone unnoticed. Even so, a fox that lives beyond its second birthday is a lucky fox so I don’t imagine that I will see her again, but she had brought up at least one heir. I’m no wiser then as to whether we have resident foxes or just visitors or how many of either, but the plant pot with the defrosted Walls’ sausage underneath gets turned over every night, so I know we still have foxes.
Raven on the Wing 