Wild Folk

by Samuel Scoville

For a second the young fox looked into the lidless, deadly eyes of the copperhead, with their strange oval pupils, the hall-mark of the fatal pit-vipers. All in one flash, the grim jaws of the snake gaped open, the two movable fangs of the upper jaw unfolded and thrust straight out like tiny spearheads, and the fatal crooked needles stabbed deep in the cub’s soft side. Growling fiercely in his little throat, he clenched his sharp teeth through the snake’s spine; but even as he closed his jaws, the fatal virus touched the tide of his life and he fell forward.

The wild folk have no tears, nor may they show their sorrow by the sobs and wailing of humankind, yet there was something in the dumb despair of the two foxes who had followed the trail of their lost cub, as they hung over the soft little body, that showed that the love of our lesser brethren for their little ones is akin to the love of humankind. Thereafter all the watchfulness and the love and the hope of the two were concentrated on the little fox with the black cross on his back. Night and day Mother Fox guarded him. Day and night Father Fox taught and trained him, until he had acquired much of the lore of fox-kind. He learned to catch birds and mice and frogs and squirrels, and even the keen-eared cottontail rabbit, whose eyes can see forward and backward equally well. He learned, too, the lessons of prudence and foresight which keep foxes alive when ice and snow have locked many of their larders. Once, when he was crossing a pasture with Father Fox, the latter stopped and stood like a pointing dog, one velvety black bent forefoot in the air, while with outstretched muzzle he sniffed the faintest of warm scents, which seemed to float from a clump of tangled dry grass. Stealing forward like a shadow, the old fox sprang at the tussock. Before he landed, a plump quail buzzed out of the cover like a bullet, to be caught by the fox in mid-air. Underneath a fringe of dry grass was a round nest of pure white, sharp-pointed eggs—so many of them that they were heaped up in layers.

After eating the quail, the old fox carefully carried off the eggs and hid them under layers of damp moss, where they would keep indefinitely and be a resource in the famine days that were yet to come.

Another day the cub learned the advantage of teamwork. On that day the two old foxes were hunting together, and, as usual, Blackcross tagged along. Near the middle of a great field, a flock of killdeer were feeding—those loud-voiced plover, which wear two rings around their white necks. For a moment the two foxes stood motionless, staring at the distant birds. Then, without a sound, Mother Fox turned back. For a moment Blackcross could watch her as she made a wide detour around the field, and then she disappeared from sight. Father Fox lay still for several minutes, with his wise head resting on his forepaws. Then, while Blackcross stayed behind, the old fox started deliberately toward the flock of feeding birds. At times he would stop, and bound high in the air, and scurry up and down, waving his flaunting brush and cutting curious capers, moving gradually nearer and nearer to the flock.

The killdeer, which are wise birds in spite of their loud voices, moved farther and farther away toward the end of the pasture, ready to spring into the air and flash away on their long narrow wings if the fox came too near, but evidently much interested in his antics as they fed. Gradually the curveting fox edged the flock clear across the field, until they were close to a thicket that lay between the field and a patch of woods beyond. Then he redoubled his efforts, prancing and bounding and rolling over and over, while his fluffy tail showed like a plume above the long grass, and the birds stopped feeding and watched him with evident curiosity.

Suddenly, when the attention of the whole flock was fixed on the performing fox, there was a rustle in the thicket, and out flashed a tawny shape. Before the flock could spring into the air, Mother Fox had caught one bird in her teeth and beaten down another with her paws.

Another morning Blackcross learned what happens to foxes who poach on their neighbor’s preserves. In the early dawn-light, he was loping along the upper end of the valley with Father Fox. Suddenly the fur bristled all along the latter’s back, and he gave a little churring growl. Right ahead of him, trotting along a path made by a generation of red-fox pads, came the old gray fox who lived by Cold Spring, a dead cottontail rabbit swung over one shoulder. The poacher was caught with the game. With another growl, the old red fox sprang at the trespasser. The gray fox was a mile from his burrow, and knowing that the red fox could outpace him, decided to fight for his booty. With a quick flirt of his head, he tossed the rabbit into a near-by bush, and with bristling back awaited the attack.

Walking stiff-legged like two dogs, and growling deep in their throats, the two came together, until they stood sidewise to each other, sparring for an opening. Finally, the old red fox snapped at the other’s foreleg, with a movement more like the slash of a wolf than the bite of a dog. The gray fox dropped his head, and the bared teeth of the two snicked together. Again the red fox made the same lead, and met with the same block. The third time he feinted, and as the other dropped his head, whirled and brought his brush, with a blinding, stinging swish, across the eyes of the gray fox. Before the latter could recover, the narrow jaws of the red fox had met in the soft flesh just above the gray hind leg. A wolf would have hamstrung his opponent and killed him at his leisure; but foxes rarely fight to the death. As the old gray fox felt the rending teeth tear through his soft skin, he yelped, tore himself loose, and started full-speed for his den. For two hundred yards the red fox pursued him, with such swiftness that he managed to nip his unprotected hind quarters several times. At each bite the fleeing gray fox yelped with the high, shrill, sorrowful note of a hurt little dog; and when Father Fox returned to claim the spoils of victory, all that could be seen of the other was a gray streak moving rapidly toward Cold Spring.

As the cub reached his full stature, he ranged farther and farther afield with the two old foxes. He learned all the hiding and camping places of the range, and how to sleep out in a blaze of sunlight in some deserted field, looking for all the world like a tussock of tawny blackened grass, or, if so be that he hunted by day and slept by night, he found that he wore a blanket on his back which kept him warm even during the coldest nights. As for his unprotected nose and four paddies, he wrapped them up warm in the fluffy rug of his thick soft brush. By the time frost had come, his fur had grown long and glossy and very beautiful, with the velvet cross of midnight-black bordered with old-gold, silver, and tawny-pink, his black brush waving aloft like a white-tipped plume.

Death came with the frost, in the form of traps, hounds and hunters. Old Father Fox taught him how to escape them all. Many years ago he had lived across the hills on the lonely Barrack, where the Deans and the Blakesleys and the Howes and the Baileys and the Reeds have a far-away hill country of their own. Old Fred Dean lived there, and prided himself on both the wild and the tame crops which he raised on his hill farm. He made the whitest, sweetest maple sugar in the world, and harvested hickories, chestnuts, butternuts, and even hazel-nuts. It was his fur crop, however, which was the most profitable. Foxes, raccoons, skunks, muskrat, mink—the old man knew how to trap them all.