A Family of Foxes
Commonplace Newsletter #104
In retrospect, the seasons of our lives are marked by small groupings of certain experiences, obsessions and pre-occupations. The summer of awkward, smitten, all-consuming first love, the winter of overeating, introspection and heartbreak. A few preadolescent years of obsession with certain TV series and cartoons being replayed until the tape wore out and a few post-university years of serious po-faced striving and a burgeoning appetite for careerism. Whatever the case may be.
But you see for me, this current season of my life- spring into summer 2023- is destined to always live on in my memory as the time of humidity, languidity and above all as the time of the foxes.
They bookend my days, the foxes, I see them at dusk and at dawn from my balcony, first during sleepy-eyed early mornings with a cup of tea and then again as the sun is setting before bedtime. The foxes are fairly routine and dependable but there is just enough variance and no-shows to keep the viewings compelling. They live- I have deduced- in the hedgerows, shrubs and other greenery that circle the bowling green1 beneath my third floor window, and it is through gaps and partings that they have created that the foxes enter the bowling green out of hours, and lounge and frolic around it like it were some ancient woodland clearing.
There’s a vixen and at least two cubs. I couldn’t tell you if Mr Fox is cautiously out of sight, absent or merely elsewhere, but I’ve yet to see him during these mornings and evenings of attentive observation and dreamy contemplation. I wonder about him. The writer’s predilection to spin narratives is a hard thing to turn off.
They say that foxes symbolise cunning and guile and therefore are of the devil2. My eyes tell me otherwise. Yes foxes have a slinking, sneaking aspect to their profile and yes I am acquainted with rural good-life livers who have told me with a catch in their throat about how their coops have been invaded and their prized hens reduced to blood and bone and feathers. Survival instincts can make ferocious demands.
But foxes- appear to be as much prey as predator and the supposed guile strikes me as being more like caution and circumspection if not quite fear of perpetual attack. Such is the price, I suppose, of trying to live a free and rural life in an urban environment.
It’s no coincidence- at least in my mind- that the fox is one of the central animals in Aesop’s Fables, showing up again and again to demonstrate and dramatise little nuggets of ancient and perennial wisdom. It was, after all, a fox who decided that the grapes that he could not reach must be sour. It was a fox who fawned over the crow sat high in a tree with a piece of cheese in her beak, speculating that such a noble and beautiful bird must surely be likewise blessed with a beautiful voice. Inevitably the flattered crow gave a proud caw and dropped the cheese which the fox snatched up. His concluding line- at least in my edition of the fables- where he says ‘You have a voice, madam, I see: what you want is wits’ is ice cold (perhaps the sneaky devilish caricature of the fox isn’t completely unfounded).
And, of course it was a fox who argued with the leopard over who was the most handsome ‘Look at my smart coat’ said the leopard ‘You have nothing to match that.’ To which the fox replied ‘Your coat may be smart, but my wits are smarter still.’ Another ice cold one-liner.
So rather than being an evil creature the fox is more of rogue, a cheeky character, a bold-faced charmer, who in a previous age may have been called a cad or a bounder. Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox fits this mould perfectly, as does the decision to have Mr Fox be voiced by George Clooney- the tuxedo clad Nespresso peddler himself- in the Wes Anderson adaptation of that great, great children’s book.
Anthropomorphism is a funny thing isn’t it? We cannot see into the mind of a fox (or any other creature for that matter), we cannot chat with them and get a feel for what they are like but these literary depictions of foxes somehow feel correct, somehow seem to point to a truth that is fundamental. Do all creatures have discernible essences that fabulists and myth-makers (and later children’s authors and animators) agree upon?
There is something uniquely soothing and peaceful about watching animals go about the business of being animals. The small-dramas and small-struggles- a pigeon pecking at a Malteser, only to get it stuck on its beak (and to repeat the same action when eventually free of it), a seagull trying to tear open a plastic binbag, a housecat lounging in the warmth of a ray of sunlight through a window which it slowly follows along the floor as the day progresses and the ray moves westwards- can reflect our own dramas and concerns but in a more naked and honest manner.
Such contemplation of animals- even if not as self-conscious as the act of writing about it inevitably renders it- has a great soothing and healing effect. I have heard of day centres for adults with autism seeing significant reductions in service user distress by introducing ‘chill out rooms’ where the agitated can watch tanks of tropical fish swim and blow bubbles. And in my own experience of working in mental health care homes I would always have David Attenborough on Netflix as a tool in my back pocket to nip circular squabbles and tensions and distresses in the bud. Is it possible to maintain a state of anger or despair in the presence of plucky, resourceful and majestic animals foraging and grooming and sleeping and wrestling? Even if it is only on television. My experience says it is not.
Here they are now. Mum and the two kids. It’s early morning and they have emerged one by one from the hedgerow that divides the bowling green from the park. Mum leads the way, vigilant and slow, and then waits for her two children to come and join her. She sits and scratches at her haunch with a hind leg, the move more that of a domesticated dog than a wild animal. The one cub- the slightly bigger of the two- leaves the family unit and lounges by the entrance of the bowling clubhouse where several times a week the bowlers emerge in their brilliant white club tops and shorts. He lays down there somewhere between bored and contented, happy enough to just hang out and look around. He reminds me of my own teenage days hanging out down the park or at a bus stop or wherever, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Just hanging out. Just being.
And now the other cub- the slightly smaller one- is crouched in hunting mode, slowly inching towards a mystery black bag that the men who maintain the green have left laying there overnight. It’s just there, puffy, shiny black on a backdrop of green from this vantage point. He3 moves in closer. He takes a cautious sniff, unsure. A second sniff, still baffled. He looks up and sees a hand-holding young couple peering at him through the ironmongery of the bowling green gates. He bolts, showing that amazing acceleration that so many animals possess. Big brother and mum follow suit and in single file they dart through their secret gap in the hedgerow.
The couple wait a moment. They turn away and continue their morning walk hand in hand. And I leave the balcony with a smile and begin my days writing.
In many ways this essay is a sequel or spiritual successor to essay #52 which was about old men playing bowls on this same green. By the metrics this was one of my least successful essays of all time but it remains one of my personal favourites, so here we are.
And when I say ‘they’ I mean George Ferguson in his book Signs and Symbols in Christian Art.
I say ‘he’ because to my untrained eyes and at this distance Mum is clearly a vixen while the two youngsters strike me as being boys. But I could be wrong.
You're lucky to see them gambol.
Beautiful observations