Had Himself Quite A Time

Once upon a time North America was a fairly nice continent furnished with trees, animals, and Indians. Then the White Man came, cut down the trees, displaced the Indians, and harvested the animals. Depending on the point of view, this has been termed culture, civilization, survival of the fittest, greed, and burning the goose that laid the golden egg at both ends. Nevertheless, in hardly any centuries at all, America's liberators stood, masters of everything except themselves, with one foot on the country's Redman, the other on its trampled flora and its decimated fauna. About this time, in the lee of a grassy hillside, Vulpes fulva shifted his goosequill toothpick, hitched up his pelt, and sallied forth to put more sap in Homo sapiens.

From then on the red fox has had himself quite a time. Not only has he been one of the few native species to escape being flattened by the juggernaut of progress, but also he has even managed to let the air out of that vehicle’s tires on a few occasions. As a matter of fact, the chances are that his population has gone up instead of down over the past fifty years. This cannot be proved because Brier Fox has never sat still long enough to allow a census. But there are few communities he has not cased, or with whose frustrated canines he does not have a flaunting acquaintance. The truth of the latter is borne out by the fact that many foxhound fanciers have sadly wished that they had owned mediocre dogs rather than good ones. The mediocre ones tend to blunder along for a while and come home; the good ones are apt to end up in the next state behind a better fox.

The Reynard continues to hold his own despite the handicap of being as conspicuous as a large beagle in red flannel underwear; despite being poisoned, trapped, and hunted afoot, on horseback, with hounds, and from airplanes; despite being tracked down, squeaked up, belled in, and dug out; despite snares, deadfalls, dirt sets, water sets, chaff sets, mystery sets, smoke, gas, and chemicals. Some of the lures to which he is subjected are enough, in themselves, to put a teetotaler under the third table from the end. In addition to standard musks and castors, elixir of chicken manure, rotten eggs, spoiled butter, asafoetida, limburger, skunk (sence, Abvssian civet, "melted" mouse, turtle tincture, oil of earthworm, whale oil, and lavender water all come strongly recommended.

One reason that Mr. Fox gets along so well is that he does not particularly care what he eats as long as it is free. Analyses of stomachs and scats have revealed mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans, insects, carrion, fruit, leaves, seeds, buckles, cigar wrappers, tinfoil, and part of an original edition of Gulliver's Travels. Not even a goat with a tapeworm could do better.

By: davidbunch

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