In the summer of 1983 we were holed up in a cottage in the rolling Shropshire hills just outside Clun. Walking along a woodland track one evening, we encountered a badger, a meeting so rare and magical that the memory of it – the subject of an earlier post on this blog – has remained to this day. Last weekend, back in the same neck of the woods, we had another remarkable encounter – this time with a fox.
Meeting a fox is not that unusual, whether in town or country. But the circumstances of this encounter were strange. We were driving out of Clun along the A488 when we noticed the fox ambling along the grassy margin at the side of the busy road. We slowed, then stopped, and the fox, possibly a young female, paused too, inquisitive about us and showing no fear of the car. She looked in superb condition, a very fine animal with black-tipped ears and elegant charcoal shading to her white-tipped brush.
For several minutes we watched entranced while she, too, stared back at us.
a fox in her fox-fur
stepping across
the grass in her black gloves
It was only when our dog stood up in the back seat and peered at her through the window that the vixen turned tail and disappeared through the hedge.
It isn’t unusual to see a fox during daylight hours. They often hunt for food in the daytime, especially when they’re feeding a litter of hungry cubs – another factor making it likely that our fox was a female.
There was a further twist to this story. Two hours later we returned along the A488 and, at the same spot, saw the fox again – this time on the opposite side of the road. Strange coincidence!
Seeing a wild animal so closely and long enough to study her every detail made for a priceless moment; but, on a busy A road, also provoked fears for her safety – as envisioned in Simon Armitage’s poem, ‘The Fox’:
Standing its ground on the hill, as if it could hide
in its own stars, low down in the west of the sky.
I could hit it from here with a stone, put the torch
in the far back of its eyes. It’s that close.The next night, the dustbin sacked, the bin-bag
quartered for dog meat, biscuit and bone.The night after that, six magpies lifting
from fox fur, smeared up ahead on the road.
Alice Oswald expresses the same sense of the animal’s vulnerablity in her poem, ‘Fox’, giving voice to her midnight food-seeking vixen: ‘my life/is laid beneath my children/like gold leaf.’
I heard a cough
as if a thief was there
outside my sleep
a sharp intake of aira fox in her fox-fur
stepping across
the grass in her black gloves
barked at my housejust so abrupt and odd
the way she went
hungrily asking
in the heart’s thick accentin such serious sleepless
trespass she came
a woman with a man’s voice
but no nameas if to say: it’s midnight
and my life
is laid beneath my children
like gold leaf
That's How The Light Gets In 
What a lovely blog. Stumbled across it while researching one of my Writing for Wellbeing workshops. Full of old favourites and new things to explore. It feels full of straightforward love and pleasure in all the things that make life worth living. Thank you.
Thank *you*, Hilary. Much appreciated!