September 17th is National Fox Day! To celebrate these beautiful animals and the love they inspire, here is the opening extract from the chapter 'Pumpkin Eyes' from Carly Holmes's exquisite collection of nature essays Love Letters on the River:
Pumpkin Eyes
The young vixen appeared late one spring. She unfolded herself from the flower bed and sat slouched on her haunches, yawning and eyeing me as I wandered up the garden path with the birds’ food. I stopped and stared. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘You’ve flattened my aquilegias. They’re not coming back from that.’
She inserted a paw into the thick fur behind her ear and had a good scratch, then stood and stepped delicately over the squashed flowers to join me on the path. Together we filled the bird feeders and scattered seed and peanuts around. I cleaned the bird bowls and filled them with water. Refilled them again after the fox had had a good drink.
I left her out there, nipping peanuts from the slabs with dainty precision, and watched from the window for a while. She returned to her flower bed and swivelled in tight circles like an ice skater, gliding over the earth, before curling up and tucking her pointy nose into the velvet pocket behind her jutting thigh bone. I was bemused but delighted, unsure whether to chase her away so that she understood that humans are not friendly creatures; we are not to be trusted.
I knew foxes visited the garden at night alongside the badgers, but daylight sightings had always been brief: a flicker of auburn in the corner of my eye as they fled at the sight of me. Only once had I seen cubs in the field behind our house, spying a tumble of squat red bodies a couple of years earlier, led by their thin mother into the shadow of the dense undergrowth. She’d trotted in a fast, straight line across the grass, intent on reaching safety, while the cubs had leapt and pounced in her wake. Every thistle needed to be sniffed, every tail of the cub in front needed to be chewed and worried at.
Hobbit, my beloved feline companion of sixteen years, had died three weeks earlier and I was grieving, lonely without him and without animal companionship. There was a yearning part of me – a superstitious, romantic part – that saw this beautiful fox’s arrival in my garden, her calm and familiar treatment of me, as a sign. Of what, I had no idea, but foxes are tricksters after all: guardians of the liminal space between our world and the underworld.
Foxes really suffer the prejudice of humans. Viewed as sly and vicious, untrustworthy, they’re persecuted – from what I’ve observed – even more than badgers. Shooting them, or trapping them in cruel ways and allowing them to suffer agonies of terror and pain before they die, is commonplace. Their frenzied and panicked slaughter of every single chicken if they manage to get into a coop is seen as evidence that they’re murderous, bloodthirsty creatures, without qualm or conscience. Killing just because they like it, as I’ve been told. The reality is that they’re simply overwhelmed by the sheer wealth of food in front of them and their instinct is to kill it all now, while it’s there. To shore them up against the lean times. Demonised for being wild creatures, for merely following their natural wild impulses, it’s no wonder rural foxes are shy around humans, reluctant to show themselves in daylight hours.
Which made the appearance of this young vixen even more puzzling and even more wonderful. I watched her through the day as she sprawled comfortably among the flowers, rousing occasionally to have a wash or look around lazily before settling back down. When I went outside, she flowed up onto her paws and watched me intently, head on one side. She followed me as I weeded the garden, stopping when I did, sniffing at the plants I piled beside her. She settled down by my feet when I sat out there with a book which I couldn’t read because I was too busy staring at her.
She left in the evening, slinking through the fence into the field behind the garden while I was cooking dinner, and I thought that would be the last I saw of her...
Love Letters on the River was published in hardback last year, and in paperback a couple of months ago. It's been described as "an unconventional devotional, full of feeling, wild magic, and awe" (Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine) and "a book of humility, beauty, and attentiveness" (Jessica McQuade, the welsh agenda). Describing encounters and missed encounters with the wildlife that surrounds the Teifi, it is a lyrical, honest and tender tribute to the many creatures ‒ both in the garden and beyond the garden wall ‒ that bring joy to Carly’s life simply by existing.
