The Fox and the Hound (12 page)

Tod then continued on his regular route. He was headed for the orchard, but on the way he heard the squeakings of two fighting mice. In a flash Tod made a six-foot bound and landed in the middle of the tangle, his forefeet striking the vines on either side of the exact spot from which the noise came. He stood there motionless, watching intently for any motion, but the mice wisely remained quiet. Tod patted on the vines to make them move and then thrust his long nose through the mat. He located the mice’s runway and plowed it up with his nose, turning his head from side to side so he could see if the mice tried to make a break for it. Even though he quickly became convinced that the mice had escaped along the tunnel, he continued his excavations for some time, more as a game than with any hope of catching the mice. Finally he stood up, shook his head to get rid of the dirt, sneezed, and continued on his way to the orchard.

He made a brief detour to pass under a black walnut tree, and was lucky enough to find a squirrel collecting the nuts. Tod made a dash for him, and for a few seconds the two animals dodged around each other, moving so rapidly they became a blur. Tod was not really hungry, and did not put forth all his efforts, so the squirrel succeeded in outdodging him and tore up the trunk with Tod snapping at his great banner tail. From the safety of the lowest branch, the squirrel cursed Tod while the fox ran around the trunk looking up at him. Convinced that there was no way of reaching the furious little animal, Tod loped away, ducked under the gate, and entered the orchard.

There were several windfalls around, and Tod bit into the most luscious. He then tumbled them around with his nose, patted them with one forefoot to make them roll, and amused himself for nearly half an hour with the delightful toys, making graceful, curving bounds as he came down on them and, stopping to seize one in his mouth, running with it as though looking for a good spot to bury his prize, and then dropping it and returning for another.

        Tiring of the sport, Tod went over to the edge of the orchard where there was some saw grass, still fairly green. He grazed there until the patch was cut down to the roots. Tod was very fond of grass, and ate a surprising amount of it. When there was snow on the ground he seriously missed this important item of diet. When he was full he dived through the familiar rabbit hole under the fence and picked up his route again by a grove of locusts.

Customarily Tod's route ran along the edges of fields, partly because Tod tended to feel exposed in the open and partly because by keeping close to the hedgerows he could often cut off rabbits feeding in the open fields. Tod's typical method of progress was to go some twenty yards with his nose to the ground, picking up any stray trails, then lift his head to look around, and then return to his trailing. Even when he crossed a fresh rabbit trail he seldom followed it, for he had learned by experience there was no point in trailing a rabbit it took too long, and even when he caught up, the rabbit was almost sere to be aware of his presence and go down a hole or into a brier patch. Tod checked the trails merely as a matter of interest. He liked to know what was going on.

He did leave his trail several times to visit scent posts. These posts could be an isolated tuft of grass, a piece of dead wood, a large stone, a tree, or a fencepost. Tod always approached these scent posts with keen anticipation. Generally there was nothing there, and after smelling carefully Tod would lift his leg and leave a spurt of urine on the post to establish the boundaries of his range and also so any passing foxes would know about him. Although Tod was not a social animal, still he was curious about his kin, and always made a point of leaving his scent indicator so other foxes would leave theirs.

When another fox had been to one of the posts, Tod became so excited he forgot his usual caution. He would sniff the urine scent long and critically, his nostrils distended as he sucked in the deeply significant odor. The caudal glands at the root of a fox's brush heavily impregnated the scent, and often a visiting fox would drop his feces as well, and these droppings were especially charged with information. At one post, Tod noted that the visitor was a this year's pup, probably looking for a range of his own. The pup was nervous, underfed, sickly, and a male. Tod decided that if the youngster hung around, he would have to be driven away. A young vixen had also been there, squatting to leave her scent on the ground. Tod had no interest in her, but no great objection, either. At another post, an adult dog fox had left his sign the night before. He was clearly a full-grown animal in prime condition - the urine was plentiful and carried the scent of rabbits, showing he was eating well - and the visitor had taken pains to scratch thoroughly around the post as a sign of defiance, as well as to sink the odor of his pads well into the ground so there could be no mistake. The odor from his caudal glands had been extremely powerful, too. Tod felt the hairs on his neck lift as he smelled around this post, and he also experienced a feeling of apprehension. Checking, he saw where the stranger had come up to the post and where he had departed. Tod trailed him nearly a mile. Then, satisfied that the stranger, in spite of his arrogant behavior, was merely passing through, Tod returned to his run. He was still nervous, and went out of his way after that to check not only all his posts but any other outstanding bush or tree that the stranger might have marked. This fellow could be dangerous.

Tod did not welcome other foxes, male or female, on his range, but he did not violently object to them, either. There was plenty of food, and he did not begrudge a stray rabbit or a few mice to visitors. Of course, if another dog fox deliberately took over his territory, using his runs, hunting on his special preserves, and scaring away the quarry every night, that was a different matter. But Tod was curious rather than belligerent toward his visitors, and after all he had many times trespassed on other foxes' territories either when he was searching for an unoccupied range as a pup or simply from wanderlust.

Between checking his posts, Tod put in some time hunting, In the open, he systematically worked the areas where he knew he could expect to find rabbits, mice, or pheasants. At this time of year, the pheasants roosted in great numbers in a stand of pines, and although they usually roosted too high for him to get them, he always checked the stand on the chance a young bird might be sitting too low. In timber, he was more haphazard, but he did take pains to check each thicket and brushpile. He also examined all clumps of grass, especially those growing around the base of trees, and invariably stuck his nose down every burrow to take a good sniff. Whenever he came on a fallen log, he always ran along it. The thick undergrowth of the forest annoyed him, and even the respite of a few feet given him by the smooth surface of the log was a comfort.

Tod never stayed in the woods longer than necessary to do a little routine checking. He hated having to force his way through the tangle, and despised the gray foxes who rejoiced in such places. As soon as possible he returned to the open country.

When winter really set in, Tod extended his range so greatly it might almost be said that he no longer had any real range at all. He went where the food was. On bad nights he depended on his caches which he spread all up and down his runs during the golden autumn days he had often killed half a dozen rabbits a night, and as he never ate more than one, he buried the rest. True, Tod was careless about burying his quarry deep enough, and the caches were frequently found by raccoons, opossums, skunks, and even the sharp-eyed crows; but enough had escaped to give him an almost endless source of supply when his hunting failed. Tod made no attempt to economize on his caches; he would often dig up a field mouse he had buried, chew off the head, and leave the rest for scavengers. Tod was not above doing some scavenging himself. He investigated the garbage dumps in the vicinity, checked roads where animals might have been hit by cars, and knew where the carcasses of three deer lay that had been shot during the gunning season and escaped to die later of their wounds. He seldom let a night pass without visiting the orchard, for he knew rabbits went there to strip bark from the young trees. He also went to barns and outbuildings, looking for rats. He was always cautious when near human habitation, for when raiding chicken houses he had learned that humans regarded chickens as their personal property, and resented poaching on their territories more than he did.

On his rounds, he never overlooked a scent post. To humans, Tod's selection of scent posts would seem to have been done at random, but this was because humans did not live in a world of scent. A scent post had to be isolated, as slender as possible - never more than three feet in diameter - and near a run. (If it were larger, something might be hiding behind it; and besides, Tod had to be able to go around and around the post easily to get all the special odors.) In addition, it had to be in the paths of air currents and have a surface that held scent. Occasionally Tod would make an exception. There was an old dried tortoise shell that fascinated him, and even though it made a most unsatisfactory scent post, it was one of his favorites.

        When snow came, Tod had a hard time of it, but not so hard as might be thought. He could scent mice in in their tunnels under the snow, and now that the ground was frozen the mice had to stay in their tunnels and could not dodge off through the grass or under vines. The morning after a snowfall, he always checked drifts around thickets for grouse, and sometimes pheasants would lie there covered by the snow but shielded by the twigs. Tod would locate them by his nose, steal up to the spot, taking elaborate precautions to make no noise, and then stand motionless like a bird dog pointing, except when he swayed himself back and forth, building up momentum for his leap. He could jump ten feet, landing on top of the concealed bird and instantly plunging his long muzzle into the bank, biting at random. Sometimes he would get nothing but a mouthful of feathers, but sometimes he got a meal that lasted several days. Tod buried the surplus in the snow; and if a sudden thaw came he was always bewildered when he discovered his carefully hidden cache lying exposed on the ground. He would run around it several times, suspecting some trick, often retiring on the top of some little mound the better to look around in case some enemy had unearthed it and was waiting in ambush. Often it took him an hour to go down to the quarry, and sometimes he abandoned it entirely.

By late November, Tod felt the remembered pulsating in his testicles. The sensation began gradually and did not disturb him, yet he took an increasing interest in the trails and scent of vixens at the posts. Often he would follow them, taking care to step exactly in their tracks where the tracks were visible so it would have taken an alert woodsman to see that two foxes rather than one had passed. He became increasingly more vocal. Heretofore, Tod had seldom uttered a sound, but now during the long winter nights he would mount to the top of a rise and give a call in four notes, repeated over and over. Sometimes he would stand with his muzzle pointed upward like a dog baying at the moon; more often he would drop his head almost between his forelegs as he called. With increasing frequency the call would be answered by other dog foxes, and rarely by the sharp double yap of a vixen. When the males heard that note they would stop their calls and stand listening intently. Then they would all begin together, hoping for another answer, but the vixens rarely called twice.

        By January the vixens began to answer more frequently, and their cries took on the squalling note that Tod remembered. The throbbing beat in his testicles had now become a driving urge that made Tod call more than ever. The other dog foxes must have felt the same urge, for the night was full of their anxious calling. The vixens’ squalling became more tortured and urgent; the males’ voices also changed, and they yowled almost like tomcats. Now they began to seek the vixens’ company; but the females were not as yet quite ready to receive them, and there was still not the odor that maddened the males and drove them on in spite of their natural reluctance to associate with others of their species.

        One night as Tod lay among some frozen weeds, his magnificent brush covering his delicate nose - the only part of him not warmly covered by his thick pelt - he heard the agonizing call of a vixen. Tod pricked his ears. The call came again and again. Tod trembled with excitement as he listening. Then he sprang up and raced toward the cry.

He had not realized how far away the sound was - not that it would have made any difference to him if he had - and he ran on and on through the night, going into increasingly unfamiliar country. As he topped a rise, the night wind hit him full in the face, and with it came the exquisite, torturing odor he remembered. Tod flew. He no longer seemed to touch the ground; he shot over it.

He found the vixen trotting down the side of a little stream, closely followed by two other dog foxes. They both stopped and looked at Tod, while he ignored them. He ran eagerly toward the vixen. She looked him over and then darted away, Tod racing after her with the other two males furiously following. He caught up with her in a dead-end gully, and the vixen ran toward him, crouched, and presented her throat while squealing hysterically, Tod could tell by her scent that she was considerably older than he was, but he cared little, for the burning, intoxicating odor from her banished all other considerations.

Tod had no idea what the proper procedure was in such cases, and sprang back, but the other two were more experienced. They rushed forward, jostling him to one side, Tod whirled, snarling and slashing left and right, but they ignored him in their determination to reach the vixen. Instantly she sprang up, hissed and snapped at them, and then ran. For nearly a minute the four animals ran wildly about the gully, so close together a blanket could have covered them. Then the vixen broke out and tore through the woods, a gray shape in the blackness, with the three males after her.