Another country gentleman, not as popular with his neighbors, I must say, as he might be, but whose people, in the course of the ages, have done a good deal of ploughing, is Brer Fox. I mean particularly the red fox, for the gray fox usually lives in hollow trees or in ready-made houses among the rocks of the mountainside.
THE THREE ROOMS IN THE FOX HOUSE
The red fox is the cunningest of his tribe. One of the ways he shows his cunning—and also his lack of conscience, in dealings outside the fox family—is in his way of getting a home. Whenever he can find a burrow of a badger, for example, he drives the badger out and then enlarges the place to suit his own needs. For Mr. Fox's residence is quite an affair. Usually it has three rooms; the front room where either Mr. or Mrs. Fox—depending on which is going marketing—stops and looks about to see if the coast is clear; back of that the storeroom for food, and behind this the family bedroom and nursery.
Mr. and Mrs. Fox are among the thriftiest folks I know. They not only provide for to-day, but for to-morrow and the day after. For example, when Mr. Fox visits a poultry-yard, he doesn't simply carry off enough for one meal. He keeps catching and carrying off chickens, ducks, or geese—whatever comes handy—all night; working clear up to daybreak. And the fresh meat he thus gets for the family table he buries—each fowl in a separate place—not so very far away from the poultry-yard. Then later he comes and gets this buried treasure and takes it home to be shared with mother and the babies.
Of these babies there are from three to five. Young foxes are very playful and think there's no such sport as chasing each other about in the sunshine, while mother sits in the doorway keeping an eye out for possible danger and watching their antics with a complacent smile, as much as to say: "Aren't they the little dears!"
If just one little fox wants to play while his brothers and sisters want to sleep—and that sometimes happens—he goes off by himself and chases his own tail around, just like a kitten.
Little foxes are very nice and polite that way.
THE KANGAROO RAT AND THE POCKET-MOUSE