‘My’ mangy fox, with the healthy fox in the background
Dear Readers, the plot has thickened regarding the foxes in St Pancras and Islington cemetery this week. On Monday, B informed me that she had seen three foxes, two with mange and one without.
‘Blimey’, I said, ‘I’m going to have to buy more jam’. As you know, I’ve been trying to medicate the fox in the photo above with a homeopathic remedy from the National Fox Welfare Society, which I’ve snuck into some jam sandwiches. ‘My’ fox seems to be on the road to recovery, much to my amazement – I’d been very skeptical when I’d started the process. I fairly skipped back to my house, passing en route a lovely patch of fritillaries, which may well crop up in a Wednesday Weed at some point in the future.
The next day, bearing an additional sandwich, I walk down to where B feeds the foxes. I’m a little late and I don’t see B, so I creep down to the feeding spot, behind the grave with the full-sized stone Labrador on it. This unlikely memorial celebrates a man who died rescuing a dog from drowning, and is always adorned with artificial flowers.
A very skinny, mangy fox watches me briefly from the other side of the hedges, and then crosses the path at a trot. I sit down with my camera. This is not ‘my’ fox, but I remember what B mentioned about one healthy fox, and two mangy ones. I see the fox again among the gravestones, just his ears and one bright eye. Then he’s on the move again, looping round behind the bins where the cats live. I sit a little longer. And then he’s back in the hedges, eyeing up the jam sandwiches with obvious longing.
I spot B making her slow progress towards where she feeds the cats. She raises her stick in greeting. I stand up and walk over, leaving the fox to his snack.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ says B. I have always liked the way that she looks at me directly, honestly.
‘Ok’, I say.
‘The Dog Unit man said he found a dead fox further up the road’, she says, and pauses. ‘A fox with mange’, she adds.
I have to look away for a moment.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘Martin thinks he was run down’, she says. ‘The cemetery people will take the body away’.
‘Where was it?’
B waves her hand vaguely. ‘He just said further up’, she says.
And so it may be that ‘my’ fox is dead. My mind is racing. I wonder if the body is still there, so that I can know for sure which fox has been killed. But then, I know that it’s hopeless. I’m sure that the evidence is already tidied away. Even if I saw the body, would I know?
And how am I going to cope with the unknowing?
‘My’ mangy fox
I am reminded of people whose beloved cats and dogs just disappear, and they never know what happened to them. But a fox is dead. The question is, what am I going to do now?
B can tell that I’m upset, but she carries on fussing over her cats, bending over, pouring the food into their bowls.
‘The thing is’, she says, ‘that we do what we can do. And that’s all we can do. They’re wild animals, after all. They come and go, and live their lives, and one day they’re gone. ‘
She straightens up.
‘A bit like people’, she says.
Her husband and father are both buried in the cemetery, and B visits them every day.
‘Did you see that skinny little fox over there?’ she said. ‘He’s got the mange really bad’.
And of course, my decision is made for me. ‘My’ fox, the one that drew me here, is most likely dead, but there are other foxes here that need help. Am I just going to give up now because all my hopes were pinned on one animal?
There’s a rustle in the brambles and the skinny fox heads off at a brisk trot. His whole tail and hindquarters are bald. He looks back briefly and accelerates his pace, until he is bounding off.
‘I’m down at Mum and Dads next week’, I say to B. ‘Could I leave the medicine with you for a few days?’
‘Of course’, says B. ‘And I’ll see you at the weekend’.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, you will’.
The healthy fox.
For the fox story so far, have a look at the posts below:
