Gamekeepers, we know, have little love for foxes--for the sufficient
reason that they are at one with foxes in their love of pheasants.
Keepers have also some of that craftiness and worldly wisdom so
developed in foxes; they know it is not always policy to say with
their lips what they believe in their hearts. There are good people
who tell keepers every now and again that foxes do no harm to game.
Keepers have heard stories in favour of foxes; they know the rights of
them. Dark and mysterious are the ways of the fox; but darker still
and more mysterious are the ways of the keeper with "the thief of the
world." This alone he will admit in favour of the fox: he adds to the
keeper's work an uncertainty which makes success the sweeter. The
fox is a favourite of Fortune, his needs are fulfilled exactly; all
things seem arranged in his favour to a nicety. Other creatures may
die of starvation in time of snow; but the fox then finds his prey
with greatest ease. Cubs are weaned about the middle of May, and must
be fed on flesh, when a majority of pheasants are sitting. And when a
sitting pheasant is scented or seen by a vixen in search of food for
her cubs, that pheasant, you may say, is dead. The keeper, though his
blood boils afresh at each nesting tragedy--at the sight of the strewn
feathers of the hen pheasant and at the cold touch of the lifeless
eggs--appreciates the deftness of the marauder's work. He reconstructs
each scene of the plundering--the silent passage of the prowling fox,
the pause of a moment to sniff and sniff again the scent that taints
the air, the swift thrust of long jaws between bramble, brier, and
bracken, the grab of gleaming teeth, the stifled cry of the dying bird,
the floating of brown feathers on the wind of night, and the joy of the
cubs at the sight of the dead bird and the scent of her welling blood.
And then the carnival of feasting at the mouth of the earth, by the old
tree of the cubs' playground, while the white owl screeches his protest
as he passes overhead, and the mother fox, sitting on her haunches,
licks her chops and watches. The work of a vixen among sitting birds
differs from that of the dog fox. While she always carries her booty to
her cubs, he kills in wanton waste, leaving the birds' bodies, often
headless, near their nests. Some or all of the eggs may be eaten,
or they may be left untouched, still as neatly arranged in the nest
as the mother bird left them when she stole off to feed and take a
bath in dust. The keeper may recognise the excuse of the mother fox's
necessity, but for the wanton slaughter by her idle mate he sees no
reason, and finds no forgiveness.
Only those who have seen the remains of game scattered round the earth
of a litter of cubs--the cubs of an experienced mother--can realise
what it costs in game to entertain foxes. Where rabbits are plentiful,
pheasants and partridges suffer less from foxes than where rabbits
are scarce, and the keeper may help a vixen to cater for her cubs by
shooting and snaring rabbits in her favour. He leaves their bodies,
but scattered at a fair distance from the earth, so that the vixen must
spend some time in fetching and carrying, and has the less time for
making a mixed bag of her own selection.
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