Natural History

The chickens used to roost in the old apple trees that grew around the farm house. On hot summer evenings, the sun would begin its descent to the West in late afternoon, and the big hordes of mongrel chickens would begin their journeys from the various portions of the farm.

And in the loud flapping of wings, chickens and roosters and pullets and cockerels would leap to the nightly sanctuary. And the drawing night would cast down upon the land, as the fireflies rose all around.

In darkness, the farmer and his wife would sit on the front porch and sip coffee or a bit of whiskey and tell stories of the old times when a man and wife could live and farm on the land and raise their children among the hayfields and cattleyards.

And as the darkness drew in deeper, the wife would yawn a bit, then her husband would yawn too. And within just a few more iterations of telling the same old story, one of them would say “Well, I guess we should be getting to bed.”  And there would be a simple solemn agreement, and the two would trundle back into the house.

And the night would grow still.

An old dog fox knew this summer ritual, and he knew it well.  He had learned in the past two summers that the chickens wandered back to the apple trees every evening, and for a while, he’d tried to catch them on their paths through the grass that led from the grasshopper-filled meadows.

He’d tried that game for a good two months, but the farmer and his wife noticed their missing fowl.   And the farmer staked out the meadows where the chickens were feeding and caught the red fox slinking along.

Any other farmer would have let the bullets fly, but not this one. This farmer had an addiction, and that addiction was called foxhounds. In the back lot behind the house, he kept well-bred pack of running Walkers, those famous Kentucky foxhounds that ran the fox long and hard.

Shooting a fox meant less sport for his dogs, and less time to brag to his buddies about his hard-driving “gyp,” that would soon have a littler of nice little puppies.

One of the perverse things about a foxhound is that a foxhound eats meat and cornbread, but it exists solely for man’s amusement. It is not like the farm shepherd or collie that manages the stock or guards the farm, and what’s more, this farm was totally lacking in that sort of dog. A fox cannot be killed and eaten, and letting it live for the dogs’ amusement means tolerating a few missing chickens.

So when the farmer saw the red fox out in the far meadow in a long hard stock of the returning chickens, he merely slipped into the dogyard and let the hounds loose.

The dogs ran the chicken hunter hard, but in the summer heat, they grew tired quickly and dived into a little stream to cool off and let the fox continue on its way.

The dog fox now knew he couldn’t be so obvious. If he wanted to take the chickens on their way back to the apple trees, he had to come on a windless night, where his scent wouldn’t waft over into the dogyard.

He had to slip about in the deepest darkness of night, black paws treading carefully so as not to alert the dogs sleeping just yards away.

The game became a complex dance of avoiding detection and taking advantage of the carelessness of young chickens.  Farmers with free running chickens almost always discount their young cockerels and pullets. Indeed, there is almost a hope that something will thin out the cockerels, who soon enough will be challenging the old roosters for status. And the crowing and fighting will be just too much for anyone’s sanity.

So the dog fox knew his best bet was to stake out the apple trees and wait for that moment when the sun starts trickling back in to bring about the dawn. As soon as that faint sun comes and casts in that purple shade of predawn. The chickens begin their stirring.

The roosters start their crowing, and as the forms of day begin to appear in the faintest morning light, they sail down from the trees.

Twice, the dog fox had charged the chickens at that moment, and they made so much noise and sailed so quickly to the trees, the farmhouse door swung open before the fox had any opportunity to catch anything.

The fox knew to wait until the roosters came down and fought a bit as they do in the early morning hours.  And after a few minutes of silly sparring, the hens and the young birds drop down from the apple trees and the day begins.

The farmer would be up in just a few minutes. He liked to begin the summer toiling before the sun began to beat down and cook the land and force the heavy sweat to drip from his brow.

So in that golden few minutes, the dumb young chickens would be on the ground, and no humans would be about.

And that’s when the fox would make his move, but he would only do so with the cockerels and pullets that had just now stopped following their mother and were only learning about how to be proper and independent chickens. These fools like to check out the tall grass for crickets in the morning dew, and they would always find some.

Such a fine repast for such naive little birds, and such a nice place for a prick-eared predator to lie in wait.

And that’s when the dog fox would take a cockerel or pullet every morning in those days of heat and growing apple trees.

It was a summer ritual to stake out the apple trees around the farmhouse each night, and virtually every windless morning, the fox bagged him a little chicken.

And so the fox lived and grew fat in the summer, but as September rolled around, the farmer would collect his feathered stock. Any virtually any young cockerels that had started crowing were quickly slaughtered and wrapped up in freezer bags. The old roosters were killed off, as were the old hens. Their fate was to become part of a meal called “chicken and dumplings.”

The remaining stock was to spend the fall and winter locked in a chicken run behind the house. The run was protected by a few hot wires, and no fox worth his salt would risk being shocked more than twice to try to menace that run.

And so the dog fox would wander off into the countryside and mouse and rabbit. But in the late spring, the chickens would be turned out again to wander the pastures and meadows.

And he would begin his night stalks near the apple trees once again.

In the winter, the beef cattle would bellow in their muddy lots, and the farmer would drop down hay and silage for for them to eat.

And as the night would draw near, he’d lead his foxhounds out to his truck and drive off to the good hilltops where the foxes haunted. There, he’d meet his friends from distant shires and districts and their well-bred hounds for a bit of chasing. They would build a nice bonfire, then slip their gaunt hounds into the coming darkness.

And the hounds would run the red foxes all through the night, while the huntsmen stood around a bonfire. The whiskey would cross their lips as often as the bragged and bullshitted, and the wild cries of running hounds would pierce the night air.

The dog fox knew about hounds, and he knew not to do his winter hunting on those hilltops where the bonfires glowed.

Instead, he crept along the brier patches where the cottontails believed they had found some refuge and the voles and bog lemmings still had not gained enough sense to avoid a fox’s jaws.

Some nights though, he would slink near the farmhouse. He’d hear the chickens clucking in their run, and he would scent the air. No dogs at home.

He would slide up to the chicken coop. He would smell the stench of chickens, and he would lick his lips.

But he knew fully well this was not his season, but the way the chicken scent made his nose quiver enlivened his spirit on those winter nights.

And soon he would be slipping back into mouser and rabbiter mode.

One winter night, the dog fox made his winter forays to examine the chicken run, and just as he decided that his appetite had been whetted enough, he decided to cross the country road that crisscrossed the farm, and as he did, set of headlights descended upon him.

He froze in the middle of the road, knowing fully well that if he ran, he would be detected, but if he stayed put, he could be killed. He stood in confident terror as the lights scanned down upon him.

It was the farmer’s truck, and he was back from a long night whiskey and hounds on a hilltop several miles distant. The hounds were all worn and threadbare from a long hard chase, and the whiskey had taken a toll on their owner’s senses as well. The hounds were in the straw of their dog boxes in the back, and their attentions were being paid to lick the brier cuts and pluck some burrdocks and beggar ticks from their coats.

But as the truck slid upon the fox, the farmer’s eyes cast down into the road before him. There was his red-coated quarry, standing tall and brave. His blue eyes met the yellow of the fox’s, and for a minute, he was taken with the beauty of such an animal.

And then the fox realized that his chance to escape had arrived, and he bolted for the brush on the other left side of the rode.

Too tired to let his hounds out for another run, the farmer sat for a few seconds and wondered for a minute if the whiskey had made him see things. And he tried to convince himself of that fact, but soon realized that he might have been a hair buzzed but he wasn’t that drunk.  The fox really had found him at home, even after all those miles of letting the hounds run on that far distant hilltop.

And so the opportunistic thief and his fox-chasing benefactor went their separate ways on this cold early winter night.

A fox-chaser always loves his quarry as much as he loves his hounds. The equation goes simply as follows: No red foxes equals no real use for the hounds.  The hounds don’t catch the fox, and the chasers never want them to.  The hounds, the houndsmen, and the foxes live in this odd symbiosis, where, if things were more than a simple sport of chase, the fox would soon fall to the shotgun and foothold trap.

But a fox-chaser lets the wild dog be, if only so he can hear the hounds cry wildly in the night as he stands around a bonfire with his comrades and drinks back the old rot gut whiskey.

The price of a few chickens is worth the joy of the winter ritual, and thus, this farmer has made his peace with the predator that takes away a few cockerels from his freezer every year.

And so the story goes on and on. So long as there is a fox-chaser, there will be room for dog foxes that like chicken meat.

It is a fine bit of absurdity in the grand scheme of the Cosmos.