When speaking of foxes Caleb always maintained that in his part of the country there were two sorts: one small and very red, the larger one of a lighter colour with some grey in it. And it is possible that the hill foxes differed somewhat in size and colour from those of the lower country. He related that one year two vixens littered at one spot, a deep bottom among the downs, so near together that when the cubs were big enough to come out they mixed and played in company; the vixens happened to be of the different sorts, and the difference in colour appeared in the little ones as well.
Caleb was so taken with the pretty sight of all these little foxes, neighbours and playmates, that he went evening after evening to sit for an hour or longer watching them. One thing he witnessed which will perhaps be disbelieved by those who have not closely observed animals for themselves, and who still hold to the fable that all wild creatures are born with an inherited and instinctive knowledge and dread of their enemies. Rabbits swarmed at that spot, and he observed that when the old foxes were not about the young, half-grown rabbits would freely mix and play with the little foxes. He was so surprised at this, never having heard of such a thing, that he told his master of it, and the farmer went with him on a moonlight night and the two sat for a long time together, and saw rabbits and foxes playing, pursuing one another round and round, the rabbits when pursued often turning very suddenly and jumping clean over their pursuer.
The rabbits at this place belonged to the tenant, and the farmer, after enjoying the sight of the little ones playing together, determined to get rid of the foxes in the usual way by exploding a small quantity of gunpowder in the burrows. Four old foxes with nine cubs were too many for him to have. The powder was duly burned, and the very next day the foxes had vanished.
In Berkshire I once met with that rare being, an intelligent gamekeeper who took an interest in wild animals and knew from observation a great deal about their habits. During an after-supper talk, kept up till past midnight, we discussed the subject of strange, erratic actions in animals, which in some cases appear contrary to their own natures. He gave an instance of such behaviour in a fox that had its earth at a spot on the border of a wood where rabbits were abundant. One evening he was at this spot, standing among the trees and watching a number of rabbits feeding and gambolling on the green turf, when the fox came trotting by and the rabbits paid no attention. Suddenly he stopped and made a dart at a rabbit; the rabbit ran from him a distance of twenty to thirty yards, then suddenly turning round went for the fox and chased it back some distance, after which the fox again chased the rabbit, and so they went on, turn and turn about, half a dozen times. It was evident, he said, that the fox had no wish to catch and kill a rabbit, that it was nothing but play on his part, and that the rabbits responded in the same spirit, knowing that there was nothing to fear.
Another instance of this playful spirit of the fox with an enemy, which I heard recently, is of a gentleman who was out with his dog, a fox-terrier, for an evening walk in some woods near his house. On his way back he discovered on coming out of the woods that a fox was following him, at a distance of about forty yards. When he stood still the fox sat down and watched the dog. The dog appeared indifferent to its presence until his master ordered him to go for the fox, whereupon he charged him and drove him back to the edge of the wood, but at that point the fox turned and chased the dog right back to its master, then once more sat down and appeared very much at his ease. Again the dog was encouraged to go for him and hunted him again back to the wood, and was then in turn chased back to its master, After several repetitions of this performance, the gentleman went home, the fox still following, and on going in closed the gate behind him, leaving the fox outside, sitting in the road as if waiting for him to come out again to have some more fun.
This incident serves to remind me of an experience I had one evening in King's Copse, an immense wood of oak and pine in the New Forest near Exbury. It was growing dark when I heard on or close to the ground, some twenty to thirty yards before me, a low, wailing cry, resembling the hunger-cry of the young, long-eared owl. I began cautiously advancing, trying to see it, but as I advanced the cry receded, as if the bird was flitting from me. Now, just after I had begun following the sound, a fox uttered his sudden, startlingly loud scream about forty yards away on my right hand, and the next moment a second fox screamed on my left, and from that time I was accompanied, or shadowed, by the two foxes, always keeping abreast of me, always at the same distance, one screaming and the other replying about every half-minute. The distressful bird-sound ceased, and I turned and went off in another direction, to get out of the wood on the side nearest the place where I was staying, the foxes keeping with me until I was out.
What moved them to act in such a way is a mystery, but it was perhaps play to them.
Another curious instance of foxes playing was related to me by a gentleman at the little village of Inkpen, near the Beacon, in Berkshire. He told me that when it happened, a good many years ago, he sent an account of it to the "Field." His gamekeeper took him one day "to see a strange thing," to a spot in the woods where a fox had a litter of four cubs, near a long, smooth, green slope. A little distance from the edge of the slope three round swedes were lying on the turf. "How do you think these swedes came here?" said the keeper, and then proceeded to say that the old fox must have brought them there from the field a long distance away, for her cubs to play with. He had watched them of an evening, and wanted his master to come and see too. Accordingly they went in the evening, and hiding themselves among the bushes near waited till the young foxes came out and began rolling the swedes about and jumping at and tumbling over them. By and by one rolled down the slope, and the young foxes went after it all the way down, and then, when they had worried it sufficiently, they returned to the top and played with another swede until that was rolled down, then with the third one in the same way. Every morning, the keeper said, the swedes were found back on top of the ground, and he had no doubt that they were taken up by the old fox again and left there for her cubs to play with.
Caleb was not so eager after rabbits as Shepherd Gathergood, but he disliked the fox for another reason. He considered that the hunted fox was a great danger to sheep when the ewes were heavy with lambs and when the chase brought the animal near if not right into the flock. He had one dreadful memory of a hunted fox trying to lose itself in his flock of heavy-sided ewes and the hounds following it and driving the poor sheep mad with terror. The result was that a large number of lambs were cast before their time and many others were poor, sickly things; many of the sheep also suffered in health. He had no extra money from the lambs that year. He received but a shilling (half a crown is often paid now) for every lamb above the number of ewes, and as a rule received from three to six pounds a year from this source.