Getting up early these days to take the dogs for a walk – I say dogs but my terrier has decided this is just too early and wraps up on the chair and refuses to move – I have started to see foxes. Or maybe just the one fox, in and around the fields.
A few days ago it was one with a crow in its mouth running by the field and climbing up into a hedge to eat its prey behind the dividing wire. I managed to get thirty metres away, up behind a tree without it seeing me, though when it did it ran away and left the prey behind.
Today I was throwing a stick high in the air and a fox was running towards us in the middle of the field, saw the stick, my collie or me or all three and realised it was running towards us so changed course. My collie is into running after rabbits – a half-hearted attempt because she wouldn’t know what to do with one if she outran it – and not into running after foxes.
However the loveliest was catching a fox unaware as we came round the corner and she barked, ran a few steps and bared again and to my right a few feet away a baby fox scampered up the hedge across the top and into the adjoining field.
Now if I could just stop them running away . . .