A fox, in emergency, will sham death to perfection. A Master of Hounds
once noosed a fox in a whip as he bolted before a terrier from an
earth. The fox appeared to have been strangled--when held up by the
scruff of the neck his eyes were seen to be closed, his jaws gaped, and
the body hung limply down from the hand. He was placed tenderly on the
ground--only to dash off into covert. To be over-cunning is a common
fault. One fox entered a fowl-house, and amused himself by killing
every bird. In departing through the hole by which he had entered, he
stuck fast, and was found hanging dead the next morning. Another sought
refuge from hounds by jumping on to the low roof of a thatched cottage,
and crawling beneath the rafters until he could crawl no farther. It
was years before his skeleton was discovered. Some of the foxes found
dead on railway lines, by the way, have been put there after death by
vulpicides. In olden days the punishment for the crime of fox-killing
was a spell in the stocks. Vulpicides remain, but the stocks--some
would say alas!--have gone from use for ever.
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