Clues to the Thief
By many signs keepers read the story of the presence and work of foxes. A fox makes a half-hearted attempt to bury game that he has partly eaten, and wishes otherwise to dispose of—and the buried game is so impregnated with his scent that no other creature will touch it. He barks at night in mid-winter days—and spreads uneasiness among sheep, as betrayed by the bleating of ewes. He digs in a way all his own, throwing out the soil behind him in a slovenly heap; he noses about mole-heaps and ant-hills, and his visit is easily detected. On soft spots he leaves his footmarks—and he always leaves his scent behind him. Pheasants without tails tell a story of a young fox's spring that failed to bring him a supper. Heads of rabbits, and nothing else, in snares, rejected maws lying near by—the disinterment of poaching cats which the keeper has buried—these show where hungry foxes have passed. By day their presence is revealed if a cock pheasant cries a sudden, uneasy, short alarm-note, by the screaming of jays, and by a particular blackbird note, which, if it does not mean stoat or cat, certainly bespeaks a fox. A crow may be seen suddenly swooping angrily as he passes over a field—a fox lurks there. The hidden cause for the continuous uneasy springing of partridges is often a fox, or at least a cub amusing himself by partridge hunting.
