Gone

The last time I saw Fred he was curled upon our back lawn. With radar ears still attuned to possible danger or feeding opportunities, he looked up warily when I emerged from our kitchen door with cheap dog food on an old tin plate.

Customarily at this point, Fred would dance away to the shady cover of bracken fronds or the fatsia japonica bush that grows in a space once occupied by a very old apple tree. But that late afternoon he made little effort to shy away as I placed his free meal three or four yards from his resting place.

He looked at me with pinpoint accuracy. It is difficult to read any animal's eyes for we are liable to put human constructions on their internal emotions. Nonetheless I thought that Fred was saying two things with his eyes - "Thank you!" and "I have almost reached the end". 

He was painfully thin and his gingery pelt was scraggy - as if he had lost the energy to groom himself properly. His rump was almost bald as if, troubled by parasites, he had scratched the fur away or perhaps he had recently been attacked by another fox or a well-fed pet dog.

Earlier in the day, our next door neighbour had dropped round the phone number of the local RSPCA (Royal Society for the Protection of Animals). It seemed that another neighbour had been alarmed by Fred's condition. She said there were flies about his rear end and he seemed desperately weak. Euthanasia would, she apparently  thought, be the most humane end to his vulpine life.

From our kitchen window I watched Fred make a half-hearted attempt to consume the plate of food but it wasn't long before he stole away - limping up the little garden path towards our vegetable patch. And that was my last sight of him.

In the following days, I  looked under bushes and into other secret places, hoping to find Fred's lifeless body so that I could bury it decently somewhere and mark his grave with rocks and a flower or two.

I shall probably never know the exact place or time when he died but I will remember that piercing last look he gave me.  We had a bond that he also recognised. Strange as this may seem, I am enormously thankful that he  came into our lives so often these past few months and  proud that we nourished him right to the end. Goodbye Fred! Sweet dreams!

Urban Fox

Gingerly he slinked

Quite slyly

Into our lives

Standing there on the lawn

Gazing at evening sunshine

Reflected in our windows

Watching our shapes

Moving behind the glass

Quite ghostly.

I brought him food

And called him Fred

As if honouring

Some pagan god.

He would  "wolf it down"

Or scurry under

The fatsia japonica

Jaws clamped

Round his midnight feast.

Then just as he came

He left us

Never to be seen again

Like a dream

That evaporates

In morning light.

Hated like a gipsy

Feared like a beggar

Unstroked or chin tickled

He died somewhere

Under a privet hedge

Or garden shed

With no stone

Inscription

"Here lies Fred."