The Thief of the World
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.
