Fox graffiti

“Their smell is unmistakable, once learned, never forgotten, and a mammalogist searching for f oxes uses his nose as much as an ornithologist uses his ears.”

– William Teagle

William Teagle had the right of it. From the very first time the scent of a fox is introduced to your olfactory nerve, that nerve will thrum like a tuning fork upon each re-acquaintance thereafter. It’s a primal thing.

As William so succinctly pointed out: It is also unmistakable. And perhaps unique.

It is musky and sweet and undeniably wild. It has the strength of fresh coffee but with underlying tones of putrescence. It is so pungent as to be a physical assault on your senses and yet, despite all of that, it is not altogether unpleasant.

Having something of a half-life, the scent of a fox lingers long after the animal has fled; which is why those red-besuited men on horses with a vanguard of hounds, can track down their vulpine quarry so easily. If the smell is so easily discerned by humans, it must be cataclysmic for canines.

Sometimes, ambling along the lanes around my house, I detect that unmistakable honk of a fox, that miasma of invisible molecules just waiting to be inhaled. And it makes me smile. Or at least, it used to make me smile until Waffle discovered some fox poo in the field below our house. You can imagine what happened upon that discovery.

One Sunday last month, I awakened early, before even the January sun had deigned to deliver any of its rays onto the crisp, white ground.

I was sitting in the dark of our sun-room, blowing onto a steaming black coffee and marvelling that the stars were still so bright not half an hour before dawn. I had turned the interior lights off so that I could better see those stars, although the crisp white outside had discouraged me from donning my coat and heading into the cold for the best view.

Staring heavenwards and trying to identify a constellation, I almost didn’t notice when the fox strolled past the side of the house and slink straight towards the hen house in the garden. Reaching the white grass, he stopped (it could have been a girl but for the purposes of this, he’s a dog fox) and seemed to test the air with his nose. In the predawn light he moved like a liquid shadow, lithe and for others, lethal. However the dark form was thrown into stark relief against the frosty ground.

Unconcerned for my hens, who were safely roosting inside a hen house which itself, is inside another enclosure, I was more curious to see if the fox would pay the poultry any attention or if perhaps, he was on the trail of something else – something unsuspecting.

I briefly considered rousing Waffle so that he might chase the red invader from my property but then I remembered it was very early on a Sunday morning any noisy barking ruckus, even though it emanated from the Hound’s mouth, would be rendered down and presented as my own fault.

As if on cue, Waffle started whining from his bed in the back hall. He had evidently scented the unmistakable scent and his olfactory nerve was thrumming.

Willing him to be quiet so as not to disturb the fox, I slowly shifted my weight to gain a better view of the shadow under the starlight. Only moments had passed since the fox had ghosted past the house but now he was sniffing along the hen enclosure. He stopped when he reached the hen house and then pushed up to rest his two front feet onto the side of the structure. He leaned forward and, I assumed from my vantage point, continued his foxy sniffing.

Under the stars and with the sun only highlighting the grey in the east, it might as well have been the dead of night. Nothing moved. Nothing stirred and even Waffle had quietened in the back hall. All was star-lit silence. Which was why, when the hens started up their panicked squawking, it sounded like a car alarm going off in a church.

Now, as much as it was nice – magical, even – to encounter such an elusive and wild creature at such close quarters, I couldn’t have him bothering my two pretty laying girls. It might put them off her eggy notions.

Setting my coffee down, I stepped up to the backdoor turned the key and looked out. One moment the fox was up on the side of the hen house, the next he had ceased to exist. He was there and then he wasn’t.

I slipped into shoes, pulled on a coat, beckoned Waffle out of the back hall (warned him to keep his trap shut) and stepped outside. And it was like walking into an invisible fog. The fox was long gone and for all I knew, was sitting on his haunches looking at me from a far away hill but the half-life remained. It was musky and sweet and undeniably wild. It was unmistakable.

Poor aul Waff though, he didn’t know if he needed a crap or a haircut.

He ran back and forward from the hen enclosure to the house, whining and moaning with the odd growl thrown in for variety. He was as distracted as I had ever seen him and for some reason, all I could do was laugh.

The Hound was obviously overcome with the pungent odour and in fairness, it was so strong, I could practically taste it in the back of my throat.

Whine-whine. Moan-moan. Growl-growl.

I left Waffle to his therapy and crunched my way over the frozen grass to the hens. I knew they were safe but I just wanted to be sure. Expecting I-don’t-know-what, I was nevertheless astonished to see two perfect paw prints in the white frost clinging to the wood of the hen house. Fox graffiti! I considered leaning forward to sniff but realised there was no need. The smell was so powerful, it was as if the fox was standing beside me.

Soon Waffle was at my heels sniffing at the hen house and whining some more (Jaysus but he loves the whining).

Suddenly, he froze. Alert and with one leg lifted, he stared in the direction of the Holly hedge at the bottom of the garden. He let out a low growl as I strained my eyes to see better in the gloom. Nothing moved.

“I know what’s down there,” I told him eventually, my breath clouding the air. “Come you into the house before the big bad wolf eats you up.”

The two of us shadowed our way back to the house under the stars, as the eastern clouds became imperceptibly paler. It was only then that I noticed a little steaming mound of brown on the frost of the kerb. The fox must have done his business before sauntering past the sunroom window.

“Get-outta-that-you,” I had to bark at the Hound, who trotted over to investigate the curiously conical point on the pinnacle of the mound. No wonder the smell had been so pungent.

I looked at Waffle and he looked at me.

“I need red-besuited men on horses, a vanguard of hounds and a bacon sandwich – all in that order,” I told him quietly. “Can you make that happen? Good man.”

CLARIFICATION

I am obviously joking about needing the red-besuited men on horses with a vanguard of hounds. Those lads need rolled in old carpets and battered with lump hammers