Flying fox

“ The flying fox is unable to take flight from the earth, and if found there can easily be caught, nor can they run under such circumstances, but, waddling along, seek the nearest tree-trunk, which they ascend with great ease by means of their long, sharp claws. From the branches they throw themselves with a strong impetus, skimming for considerable distances through the air, like the flying squirrel of the low latitudes, and the flying possum of Australia. ”

“ As it collects its food by means of its mouth, either when on the wing or when suspended within reach of it, the Flying Fox is always more or less liable to have the spoil wrested from it by its intrusive companions, before it can make good its way to some secure retreat in which to devour it unmolested. ”

“ Many people are prejudiced against the flying fox on account of its extremely powerful and unpleasant smell; but once the bat-like wings are got rid of, that goes, and when the flying fox is properly skinned and cleaned, the flesh is clean and white, looking somewhat like a fowl that has been skinned. Judgment is required in choosing them to get those that are young and plump. They can be stuffed with bread crumbs and herbs or mashed potatoes, and either roasted or boiled. A young flying fox, split like a Spatch cock and grilled, is a capital breakfast dish. ”

“ The ordinary idea of the fox is that of a flying frightened creature tearing away for bare existence; he is really a bold and desperate animal. The keeper will tell you that once, when for some purpose he was walking up a deep dry ditch, his spaniel and retriever suddenly ‘chopped’ a fox, and got him at bay in a corner, when he turned, and in an instant laid the spaniel helpless and dying, and severely handled the retriever. ”

“ The tail of the War-Dragon, whose jaws were snapping at flying Russian heels far on ahead, had been drawn on at dawn, and through dust and mire and sand we followed its squirming wake. On the top of every little hill we could see it painfully crawling ahead—length interminable, its vertebræ carts, coolies, Chinese wagons, its body columns of soldiers, its scales the flashes of sword-scabbard and wagon-tire—and whipping the dust heavenward in clouds. The button on that tail was Lynch the Irishman on a bicycle, and that button was rolling itself headward—leading us all. ”

“ I could dimly see the flying foxes hanging by their unwebbed thumbs from creviced rocks, till it suited them to spread the umbrella-like membrane which covers their slim fingers, and dive into the sable night. Screeching sea-birds, just going to rest, mingled their hoarse voices with the sighing of the breakers near at hand, and the saddened tone of the wind as it sang through the crags and crannies of the rocks. ”

“ The flying foxes shot from tree to tree, and moths as big as sparrows whirred about the trunks, one moment black against the glare beyond, and vanishing the next, like imps of darkness, into their native gloom. ”

“ Flying foxes would swoop into the tree at sundown to squeak and gibber among its repellent branches till dawn, when some, too full for flight, would hang among the lower limbs all day, sleeping with eyes veiled by leathery wings. ”

“ There is little bark left in a fox when the quacking of ducks disconcerts him and makes his brake a welcome refuge.
I sat down under the furze, brushed the bloody feather from my muzzle and licked my paws, which had been cut by the sharp-edged ice in my mad struggles to get out of the water. Though dawn was some two hours off, I had no heart for any more hunting; so I made for my lair, which I reached by way of the brambly thicket above the quarry, and, after shaking my coat again, crept to where my snug kennel lay under its double roof of gorse and snow. ”

“ The chances are that the trapper will see the black fox himself almost as soon as he sees his tracks; for the sheeny coat that is black fox's beauty betrays him above the snow. Bushy tail standing straight out, every black hair bristling erect with life, the white tail-tip flaunting a defiance, head up, ears alert, fore feet cleaving the air with the swift ease of some airy bird—on he comes, jump—jump—jump—more of a leap than a lope, galloping like a wolf, altogether different from the skulking run of little foxes, openly exulting in his beauty and his strength and his speed! ”

“ His bushy tail is the envied trophy of the huntsman, who calls it a brush. His colours are white, black, red, yellow, bluish, or variegated; and in cold climates he always turns white in winter. The father takes no care of his children; but the mother performs her duty with the most exemplary devotion for four months.
The fox is generally a solitary, suspicious animal; even when as much tamed as he can be, he seems to think he is going to be deceived and ill-treated: perhaps he judges of others by himself. ”

“ Desperately preoccupied though she was, the hawk's all-seeing eyes detected the red outlines of the fox through the bush. With a frantic beating of her wings she lifted herself from the snow. The fox darted upon her with a lightning rush and a shattering of icicles. He was just too late. The great bird was already in the air, carrying her deadly burden with her. The fox leapt straight upwards, hoping to pull her down, but his clashing jaws just failed to reach her talons. ”

“ If he can leap the wall, or creep in beneath the gate, he ravages the court-yard, puts all to death, and retires with his prey. He hunts the young hares in the plains; and seizes the old ones in their seats. The eye of the Fox is of a lively hazel colour, and very expressive. ”

“ Work, in fact, now began to enter the lives of the three little foxes, work which to them had all the zest of play. Their mother began to take them hunting with her, in the moonlight or the twilight. They learned to lie in wait beside the glimmering runways, and pounce unerringly upon the rabbit leaping by. They learned to steal up and catch the brooding partridge, which was a task to try the stealth of the craftiest stalker. They learned to trace the grassy galleries of the meadow mice, and locate the hidden scurriers by their squeaks and faint rustlings. ”

“ It was the enemy—it was man. I recognized him at first sight, unlike though he was to the being I had vaguely imagined. There is no reason for surprise that I did. For what beast of the field or wild stands erect with such ease on his hind-feet, or has face, fore-paws and ears as bare of fur as is the skin of a mangy fox? Moreover, I caught his scent; and it was the same scent as had tainted the stone on the cliff, that tainted the faggots—evidence hardly less convincing than the steady gaze of his eyes and the shout he raised. At the awful sound we turned tail and melted into the brake. ”

“ A fox, in emergency, will sham death to perfection. A Master of Hounds once noosed a fox in a whip as he bolted before a terrier from an earth. The fox appeared to have been strangled—when held up by the scruff of the neck his eyes were seen to be closed, his jaws gaped, and the body hung limply down from the hand. He was placed tenderly on the ground—only to dash off into covert. To be over-cunning is a common fault. One fox entered a fowl-house, and amused himself by killing every bird. ”

“ A fox is so familiar with his immediate surroundings that, till his keen senses detect signs of danger, he will roam unconcernedly hither and thither in the dark woods near his “earth,” frolicking with his mate, or hunting the rabbits and the mice, or sportively chasing the wind-blown leaves, as if a hound could never disturb his peace. ”

“ There on the bare dry ground the vixen laid us—my two sisters and me. If I was like the baby cubs I have since seen, I was born blind, my muzzle was blunt and rounded, and my coat as black as a crow, the only white about me being a few hairs in the tag of my tiny brush. Even at the time when I first remember what I was like my fur was still a very dark color and bore no resemblance to the russet hue of a full-grown fox.
This was a few weeks after my eyes were opened, when, after awaking from our first sleep, we were in the habit of sunning ourselves just [Pg 10] inside the mouth of the earth. ”

“ Generally, the fox is a creature of ill omen, long-lived (living to eight hundred or even a thousand years) , with a peculiar virtue in every part of his body, able to produce fire by striking the ground with his tail, cunning, cautious, sceptical, able to see into the future, to transform himself (usually into old men, or scholars, or pretty young maidens) , and fond of playing pranks and tormenting mankind. ”

“ The fox knows the shape of each tree and bush, and of each shadow thrown on the grass; he notes the havoc of the tempest and the work of the forester. When the wind roars loudly in the branches overhead, or the raindrops patter ceaselessly on the dead herbage underfoot, or the mists blot out the vistas of the woods, he seldom wanders far from home, for at such times Nature plays curious tricks with sound and scent and sight, and danger steals upon him unawares. ”

“ Just then it vexed me to hear the vixen's call, far off though it was, as I feared she might hit my trail, follow it, and spoil my hunting. Her yapping caused all four birds to raise their heads and listen, but they showed no further sign of alarm, as every creature of the wild knows that dead silence precedes the kill and that it need have no dread of a noisy fox. ”

“ It is, however, hardly matter for wonder that I was blind to the warnings they conveyed, for the frosts of our peninsula are, as a rule, so slight as to relax their feeble grip by noon-day; even the smallest birds suffer little discomfort. Indeed, I have sometimes thought that migratory birds flock to our shores because of the mildness of the climate and the hospitality its feeding grounds offer; but this is only the view of a fox, who welcomes these aliens, and takes heavy toll of their number. Whatever the cause may be, there is no doubt about the fact. ”

“ Had he not waited to learn who was coming, you would not have caught even a glimpse of him. Now he half circles to get our wind, for like most animals he trusts his nose above all other senses. There are fleeting glimpses of fur as he passes an opening or halts behind a windfall that hides all but his ears; then he heads away in swift jumps, his brush quivering nervously, and disappears in thick cover. No use to follow; you will not see that fox again. ”

“ In the wilderness one often finds tracks in the snow, telling how a fox tried to catch a partridge and only succeeded in frightening it into a tree. After watching a while hungrily,—one can almost see him licking his chops under the tree,—he trots off to other hunting grounds. If he were an educated fox he would know better than that.
When an old New England fox in some of his nightly prowlings discovers a flock of chickens roosting in the orchard, he generally gets one or two. ”

“ Imagine me, then, a handsome young dog-fox, head erect, ears pricked, brush on end and well fluffed out, trotting along on the very tips of my toes with my first rabbit between my jaws, and you have a picture of me as I swaggered over the bare turf in the moonlight, before the eyes of my admiring mother and jealous sisters. ”

“ But the hunter who traps the fox for its own sake, and not as an uncalculated extra to the mink-hunt or the beaver total, must go to the Far North, to the land of winter night and midnight sun, to obtain the best fox-skins.
It matters not to the trapper that the little kit fox or swift at run among the hills between the Missouri and Saskatchewan is the most shapely of all the fox kind, with as finely pointed a nose as a spitz dog, ears alert as a terrier's and a brush, more like a lady's gray feather boa than fur, curled round his dainty toes. ”

“ Sport is a great educator. Foxes certainly, and hares probably, run the faster for being hunted. Indeed the fox appears to have acquired its pace solely as the result of the chase, since it does not figure in the Bible as a swift creature. The genuine wild pheasant in its native region, a little beyond the Caucasus, is in all probability a very different bird from its half-domesticated kinsman in Britain. ”

“ Sometimes, to escape from dogs, it will climb a small tree and get far above the pursuer's reach. It is at its best only in the forest, and cannot hold its own as the red fox does, in a country much inhabited by men. With all his slyness the gray fox "lacks that astonishing shrewdness and faculty for working out deep-laid schemes which enables the red fox to turn the tables on the hunter." ”

“ The cunning of the Fox is proverbial. When hunted, he “makes a thousand shifts to get away,” and often succeeds in baffling the whole pack of well-trained Hounds. His stealthy tread, as he winds along the hill sides and valley slopes to seek his prey or to reach his lair, is altogether characteristic of one thoroughly well up to his work. ”

“ From inside the fringe of reeds I could hear the honking of the geese on the open water, and at times a sound that was new to me, a wild trumpeting which seemed to come from where the sea was thundering on the bar. For a fox naturally prompt in decision, I stood there long, considering whether to make a journey that offered but poor prospect of success. In the wild-fowl's feeding-ground I had come from there was at least makeshift for an ambush; on the level ice-field before me there was not cover enough to hide a mouse, and the chance of a kill was very, very small. ”

“ AN EARL ON FOX-HUNTING. The Earl of Winchelsea and Nottingham addressed the following letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, in May 1870:—Sir,—The fox is tolerated, nay preserved (under the penalty of conventional ostracism against his slayers,) because he is the only animal with whose intellect man may measure himself upon equal terms without an overwhelming sense of the odds in his favour. The lion, the elephant, the ibex, the chamois, and the red deer are beasts of chase falling before man, but the fox alone can cope with him in point of intellect and sagacity, and put him to all his shifts. ”