Skulking With the Foxes

by Carys Crossen

The first fox, the very first, she spotted in the spinney crammed between the dual carriageway and the perpetually half-finished housing estate.

It was a sullen November day and Alana had taken a walk for want of anything else to do. The clouds had been threatening rain for hours but hadn’t followed through. Alana drifted along the pavement, cars whizzing past, until on a whim she turned away from the road and onto a dirt path meandering into a gathering of scrubby trees.

The fox was waiting by a rubbish bin. Alana did not see it at first. Its orange fur melded so perfectly with the leaf litter beneath the trees that it was a ghost, perceptible only to those with a sixth sense.

She had paused for no reason, idling on the path, staring at where a beech tree had toppled over, roots spiking at the air. The fox, which had frozen at her approach, made a dash for a clump of brambles, and the motion drew her eye. She watched it flicker through the trees, over the petrichor and into a blackberry patch. The thorns parted for it as they did for the prince in the fairy tale, at the end of the princess’s hundred-year slumber.

Alana had never seen a fox before. It was smaller than she had expected, not much bigger than a cat. Its vivid fur, its flickering movements, the apprehension in its dark eyes, delineated an alien creature. Something utterly wild, something that had no kinship with humans or even dogs. Something that couldn’t, shouldn’t be tamed. Something that she couldn’t ever truly comprehend.

Alana stood watching it, mesmerized, until at last, reassured by her stillness, the fox slunk away from the brambles and vanished amongst the trees.

---

After that day, it was as though Alana had foxes painted on her eyeballs. She saw them everywhere, every day. Trotting down the street, impudent as any teenager. Perched atop the walls of the churchyard, scurrying across dirt paths in the woods, slinking through the alley behind her house, as buoyant on their feet as a ballet dancer.

Alana would stand motionless, even holding her breath, trying to vanish. To meld with the backdrop, the redbrick walls, the tarmacked roads, the scraps of grass and weeds that dotted her nondescript suburb. To remove herself and leave enough space in the world that the foxes might creep away from the shadows and the gutters and nestle in the empty place. So that Alana might see them. Study them. Achieve a certain kind of one-sided intimacy with them.

To learn from them.

---

Foxes ate meat, according to the wildlife website Alana consulted. They also liked cheese, peanuts and fruit.

She dumped a raw chicken and plenty of unsalted supermarket peanuts at the bottom of her small square of garden, installed a comfy chair by the narrow dining room window (the only one that overlooked her yard) and began her vigil.

---

It took nearly three weeks for the foxes to come creeping through the garden gate, after navigating the risky territory of her suburban street. Alana had propped it open a week prior, thinking that perhaps the foxes were deterred by the fence. They might also be deterred by the sodium lights spotlighting her street, the cars zooming past on the road outside with blithe disregard for the speed limit, but those things she couldn’t do anything about.

But the foxes came, in the end. It wasn’t quite midnight, and it was a cool night, clear as quartz. Alana was nodding in her chair by the window, the lights turned off, when the flicker of orange fur and bushy tail roused her.

Foxes. Two foxes. A dog fox and a vixen, if their respective sizes were a reliable indicator. They didn’t go straight to the food. They trotted round the edges of the lawn, dark eyes probing suspiciously at their surroundings, sniffing at anything that interested them. A spindly shrub, a knothole in the fence, a footprint pressed into a patch of bare earth.

They weren’t zoo animals. They didn’t laze around, desensitized to human stares, they didn’t amble over to the food and eat at leisure, safe from threats and intruders. Every tendon, every nerve in their slim bodies was thrilling with apprehension, with caution, with feral perception.

The foxes ate the food eventually. They snapped at it, tearing lumps off the chicken and gulping it down, nipping daintily at the peanuts, occasionally pausing to freeze as if playing their own game of musical statues, prompted by some noise or motion unperceived by Alana.

Then they went. No pausing for play or to investigate an intriguing object. They went so lightly they seemed made of mist, out through the garden gate, into the street, and were swallowed up by the dark.

---

The foxes did not come every night.

Alana would wait all evening, as faithful as the foxes were fickle, but they were as clouds drifting across the sky. They were moved by invisible forces, it was hopeless to try and predict their movements. They came when they wanted. Sometimes just after dusk when the sky was still tinged with shell-pink and peach. Sometimes at the witching hour, when it was lightless, and the only sounds were of drunks staggering home and the breeze stirring the stubby shrubs in Alana’s garden. Once or twice in the pewter light of a rainy morning.

She got to know them, just a little, nonetheless. The dog fox, fur orangey coloured, sturdier in build than his female companion. The vixen’s fur was reddish, her frame dainty, and her tail was tipped with white as it was in every illustration ever done of a fox. A third fox made itself known after a while: a handsome creature, sides and legs peppery grey, only its back and head the more familiar red. The vixen enjoyed peanuts. The grey one liked lapping grimy water from the bird bath. The orange dog fox was the boldest, sometimes slinking right up to the house and sniffing at the window ledges.

Alana contemplated naming them, but did not, in the end. Foxes had no use for names. They did not need to distinguish themselves; they were entirely themselves and needed nothing to strike a comparison against. They sufficed for themselves as humans never could.

Alana thought they were to be envied. For a few absurd nights she toyed with the idea of joining them in their private, peaceful liberty: stripping naked, prowling the perimeters of the garden, scavenging food. But then she imagined how she must appear to the foxes. A great, slow, lumbering brute, mute and ungraceful. The impulse faded, and she remained behind glass. As though she were the one in the zoo, not even worthy of being gawked at.

---

The neighbours found out.

Of course, they did. The days of net curtains were passing, but blinds were easier to peer through. They saw the foxes, Alana’s only visitors save the cold callers offering insurance or cheap broadband. They brought their outrage to her door like miskicked footballs or errant letters.

‘Pests!’ spat Nicole from two doors down.

‘They attacked a woman in Ipswich,’ affirmed old Mr Richards.

‘If you feed foxes, they can become too familiar and lose their natural respect for you,’ Eric from next door intoned.

Alana blinked at the notion of ‘respect.’ Foxes had no respect for humans – why should they?

‘They’re not doing any harm,’ she told everyone.

Everyone disagreed. The extent of their loathing – which was based mostly on what the foxes MIGHT do—shocked Alana. Even the Forbes, who had three Chihuahuas and professed to adore wildlife, were vehemently against encouraging the foxes.

‘But you’re always saying you love wild creatures,’ Alana protested to Jennifer Forbes.

‘Oh, I do,’ she nodded, face earnest. ‘I love rabbits, and things like robins and deer and sweet little hedgehogs. But foxes –’

Jennifer broke off and pulled a face to emphasise her disgust.

‘I see,’ drawled Alana. Poor foxes, the losers in the PR battle.

---

When the neighbours realised their disapproval wasn’t going to keep Alana from leaving food out for the foxes, they turned surly, muttered about ‘anti-social behaviour.’ One man went so far as to ring the local council. The woman who answered the phone clucked sympathetically, explained they had no statutory powers to remove foxes and hung up.

So, Eric and Angela called in pest control.

Alana was grudgingly doing the hoovering when she saw the van pull up outside, bright red painted letters proclaiming PEST CONTROL: ALL VERMIN EXTERMINATED. She crept into the garden, velvet-footed, mimicking her vulpine guests.

The pest control specialist was loud-voiced, confident, careless.

‘Well, there’s three ways we can deal with ‘em,’ he proclaimed. ‘We can use repellents, live-trap ‘em or just shoot ‘em. Last one’s the most expensive, but it’s effective. The little buggers don’t come back after that.’

‘Oh, let’s shoot them and have done!’ Eric sighed. ‘Bloody woman next door won’t leave off feeding them.’

‘Yes, get rid of them,’ Angela chimed in. ‘They’re dangerous, I’ve been reading about them, attacks are on the increase…’

‘Okey-dokey,’ the pest controller said cheerily. ‘I’ll bring the rifle, set up in my van. They come in via the street, you said? I’ll be back just after ten. No point coming earlier, they’re nocturnal brutes. It’ll be straightforward, I’m a great shot…’

Alana crept inside, wrestling with a powerful urge to scale the fence and throat-punch all three of them.

---

The pest controller was scheduled to come back that same evening. Alana knew when she saw the smug smiles on Eric and Angela’s faces as they strolled past her house, on the way to who-knows-who-cares.

What to do? What to do?

Bribe the pest controller to leave? No good, she didn’t have nearly enough money to make it worth his while, and the neighbours would only get someone new in. Try to reason with Eric and Angela? Nope, they’d never listen – just gloat and deliver a lecture about the evils of encouraging vermin.

Keeping the foxes away was the only solution that suggested itself. The thought was bitter as mugwort, but Alana knew that she had no choice. She couldn’t risk the lives of her foxes. She’d read that urban foxes led short lives even without people hunting them. They often met quick, bloody ends when they tangled with rubber and steel on the road, or people would set their dogs on them…

Alana scowled. Bloody neighbours! The foxes had never hurt them! Not like most people. She hoped the pest controller was a rotten shot, serve bloody Eric right if he got a pellet in his fat backside…

The ludicrous, risky idea inserted itself in her mind like a coin in a slot machine. And no amount of shaking would dislodge it.

---

It was dangerous. It was stupid. It involved trespassing and inadvertent vandalism. It was almost certain to fail.

None of which was sufficient to dissuade Alana. Her plan would require the foxy attributes of cunning, daring and lawbreaking, which alone was enough to persuade her into doing it.

She had been industrious all afternoon, running around town making purchases, inspecting all around her garden fence, surveying the street and making some important calculations, digging out old soft toys and wire coat hangers from the attic. When the sun began its withdrawal over the horizon, she went into the garden one last time. She made sure there was no trace of food, locked the gate and spritzed the fox repellent she’d bought all over the garden.

Once it was dark, she got dressed, all in black. She didn’t own a balaclava, so she wound a black scarf around her face, ninja-fashion. Alana sighed as she regarded herself in the mirror. She hoped like hell everyone in her street was slumped in front of the TV that night. Coming up with a plausible excuse for wandering round dressed like a burglar would require great powers of invention and tremendous self-confidence. Alana had exhausted her store of the former and had never possessed the latter.

At five to ten, she gathered up her props and crept into the street, avoiding the streetlamps. She made her way to her chosen hiding spot, behind Brian Smart’s prized BMW, glossy as an unwrapped candy. The pest control van came rumbling up ten minutes later, right on time.

Alana contemplated her props. One was a tatty stuffed toy fox she’d had since she was eight, the other was a crude fox-shaped article made out of several wire hangers and a covering of felt. Both had been superglued to bamboo poles and were ready to serve as decoys. They looked preposterous.

She sighed yet again. Too late now. She settled in for a longish wait. Thirty minutes minimum. Enough time for Mr. Pest Controller to get bored…

Alana lent against the BMW, and against all odds, nodded off.

---

Some noise from a nearby house woke her. Alana snapped awake, every nerve tingling. A quick glance at her phone informed her it was nine minutes past midnight. Another glance round the car confirmed the pest control van was still parked outside Alana’s house.

Showtime.

She tried the wire-frame fox first, poking it around the car and jiggling it up and down in the hopes of attracting the pest controller’s notice.

No luck. With a sigh, she retracted it, and picked up the stuffed toy, proffering it around the bonnet. She jerked the puppet up and down, in almost absent-minded fashion.

Alana didn’t hear the shot from the rifle. She felt it, the force of the impact jerking the puppet, yanking at her wrists and forearms. And almost at the same time, the BMW’s alarm went off.

Alana yelped with shock, grabbed her puppets and scuttled for safety on all fours, rather like a fox herself. She had just managed to take cover behind a battered old Volvo when Brian Smart appeared on his drive, snorting like a bull.

‘Who the hell’s been messing with my car?’ he bellowed. ‘Bloody kids, I’ll wring their – hang on, there’s a bloody great hole in it!’

By now, people were beginning to appear. Old Mr Richards, grinning despite himself. The stroppy teenagers from across the road were gawking from their bedroom windows, mobiles held aloft as they filmed the shenanigans. And Eric and Angela, on their front doorstep, innocent curiosity writ all over their features. Funnily enough, there was neither sight nor sound of Mr Pest Controller.

Alana, giggling deliriously, crept away, unwinding the scarf from her face as she went, to hide somewhere safe until the fuss died down. She suspected it might take a while.

---

The pest controller had shot Brian Smart’s beamer, a sizeable pellet thudding into the engine and causing several hundred pounds worth of damage. Inspecting her puppet afterwards, Alana found the hole the pellet had ripped in it, like a knife into warm butter. The shot probably would have embedded itself in a real fox, or at least its force would have been lessened, but the stuffing of the toy hadn’t been sufficient obstruction.

The scene after the accidental shooting of the car had been glorious. Brian, enraged, accused the kids across the road. They vehemently denied it. Their parents emerged to alternately accuse their kids and to upbraid Brian. Mr Richards, who had served in the army once upon a time, misidentified the damage as a bullet hole. Everyone began wittering about gang warfare till someone noticed the words POISON, LIVE TRAPPING, SHOOTING on the pest control van. The chastened exterminator emerged, protesting he’d only been doing his job. Nicole, voice shrill with hysteria, demanded to know what he was playing at, bringing guns onto a residential street. Brian demanded the exterminator pay for the damage to his car. The exterminator argued that Eric and Angela had signed a liability waiver, meaning they were responsible for all damages. Eric and Angela yelled at the exterminator. Brian screamed at Eric and Angela.

And so forth. Alana watched, peering over a garden wall at the end of the street, having a thoroughly good time.

It was gone three in the morning by the time everyone had stormed back into their residences. Alana skulked home not long after, shaking with exhaustion and triumph. She had a feeling that the foxes wouldn’t be bothered again.

---

Everyone in the street forgot about the possible threat posed by the foxes. The ongoing feud between Brian and Eric and Angela, Brian's suing Eric and Angela for damages, Eric’s legal action against the exterminator and the subsequent counter-suit against Eric and Angela for defamation by said exterminator were all so delicious that no scruffy foxy intruders could hope to compete.

Alana followed the proceedings with half-an-ear, occasionally feeling a twinge of guilt over how well her wretched little plan had worked. But she forgot even that as she watched the foxes visiting her garden – secretive, sly, shameless. No, not even shameless, for they had no notion and no understanding of shame. They were animals, and they did as they must.

Alana, curled up in her chair, watching the dog-fox and the vixen at play, leaping and chasing, the grey fox nibbling some ham, raised her glass of wine to them in a cautious toast.

‘To survival,’ she murmured. She took a sip, watching her foxes skulk away into the glittering, whispering night.