Immortalising the story of the fox
Our garden is alive with wild flowers and wild creatures. One night last week the creamy heads of the gipsy lace surrounding the base of the elder tree shook violently, far more than when a small bird alights there, alerting our attention. A fox cub emerged from among the slender stems. Its weak blue eyes stared up at the window where it had seen my movement ten feet away. It had smelt the bird food. In the feeder hanging on a spur of the elder tree out of reach of such predators. It was thin and wobbled about on weak legs and obviously near to starving. The smell of fat-ball crumbs hacked out by the woodpeckers and fallen to the ground was overpowering. Its little black nose was lifted with intuitive knowledge to the scent of possible danger but quickly dropped to the grass. One tiny crumb after another was licked up. A dozen in its belly gave it strength to fear again. The lace curtain closed behind as it vanished.
I called my wife. We waited at the window without moving. After five minutes the cub returned, now a little more certain there was no danger, but almost collapsing on weak legs. This brought out the mothering instinct, and my wife cut up a round of stale bread destined for bread pudding of the sort we used to have in the war, and after scraping it round the frying pan that had just fried sausages for supper, she quietly placed the offering in front of the lace curtain. We waited.
Sure enough, back came Fergaunt, centre stage. He has been given this name and personality, because I am presently writing a book about a fox called by this ancient name for the species and set in Kingley Vale. This Fergaunt delicately picked up a lump of the bread and vanished back out of sight, but quickly returned for another. Deciding this was too good to leave, he scoffed the lot. A few sniffs around, then the gipsy lace shook – and was still.
The next evening we patiently waited again behind the window at dusk. The bait was lumps of chicken fat cut off our own supper. It was almost dark when he appeared, little legs not quite so wobbly, though the eyes were still full of fear and distress. After a few moments he started to gobble up the pieces of fat, but then the lcae curtain behind was suddenly flattened and three more cubs tumbled out. Fergaunt should have kept quiet about his discovery of a magic food source.
He flattened his ears and turned on his brothers and sisters growling like a worn-out teddy bear needing overhaul in the Weald and Downland Repair shop. A scrum of whirling brown bodies tumbled across the grass. They had no thought for anything. They fell into the old frying pans filled with water for the birds. They bit each other with mewling yelps. One of them clung to Fergaunt’s white-tipped tail until those weak legs stopped working and he had to sit down. One of them smelt the smear of fat and was licking the grass clean.
Within a minute the pantomime was over. One of the cubs had smelt dreaded human scent on a garden chair it bumped into. It seemed to give a warning, a squeaky imitation of the low deep grunt with which the vixen warns the cubs. The remaining lace curtains shook again, and were still. All was quiet under the elder tree.
I have never felt antagonistic to foxes, although in my youth I was an occasional hunt foot-follower, interested in the spectacle and the camaraderie of country folk. But fox-hunting was an important social event for my great-grandfather, Leicester Hibbert, whose fascinating journal I now have, which records among the details of his Grand Tour, his days fox-hunting on a very special mare called The Learned Pig, which he had bought from the Prince of Wales (the future
King Edward VII). He also records in this journal that he ‘rode over to Windsor to play billiards with Prinny’ – some twenty miles from the family home at Chalfont. Leicester was an accomplished artist, mainly landscapes (some in the British Museum and National Gallery collections) but his work included self-portraits of himself as a tyro mounted, in full uniform, with the Garrison Hunt. On the death of The Learned Pig he commissioned one of its hooves to be made into an inkwell with solid silver mountings and lid. The family eventually ran out of money and the estate was sold off to meet debts.
His son, my grandfather Charles Hibbert, lived in Devon and was an avid otter hunter. My father met him when he was following the Exmoor hunts to get material for his book Tarka the Otter – and married his daughter. ‘Pa’ Hibbert became a character in the book and my mother is the shy young maid who does not give Tarka away when the dragonfly lands on its nose making it sneeze.
Father was only interested in immortalising the stories of otters and equally of the hunted stag. I am wondering if young Fergaunt will help me immortalise the story of the fox.