A midnight crockery thief

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/10/country-diary-midnight-crockery-thief-fox-vixen

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I opened the hedgehog feeding station to discover that not only had every last morsel of food been consumed and the dishes licked clean, but a ceramic bowl had gone missing. I searched the flower borders and shrubbery, but the bowl was nowhere to be found. In order to make off with their takeaway dinner the thief had managed to navigate the enclosed feeding station’s internal predator baffle and then jumped my two-metre fence.

Though I had heard a fence panel bang the previous evening as an animal vaulted over, I had failed to catch sight of the intruder slinking through the impenetrable shadow of my semi-wild garden. However, a musky fug reminiscent of boiled onions and violets lingering in the side passage, and the twisted, taper-ended faeces deposited on the path, left me in no doubt as to the thief’s identity – a fox.

Related: Invasion of the urban foxes

I was woken at 3am by the fox barking. It was not the familiar banshee scream of a lovelorn vixen, but a rapid, almost mechanical, yipping. I crept to the landing and peered out of the window. The egg-yolk moon illuminated a vulpine figure pacing the threshold of my driveway. The fox was small with dainty features, a vixen. She was so lean that I could see the outline of her ribs. Her fur was faded and patchy, like a moth-eaten jumper. Her haggard appearance suggested that the stress of cub rearing was beginning to take its toll.

She stood stiffly, scenting the air, her sparse brush in an uneasy curl. Suddenly she disappeared behind my parked car and I heard a squeal, followed by guttural growling. The interlude lasted barely 10 seconds before the vixen trotted out and resumed her nocturnal warbling.

Across the road my neighbour flung open his patio door and strode out into the garden, hollering and clapping. A security light flared, floodlighting the street. The fox spun round with a startled glance, her ears pricked and body tensed. As she loped off along the pavement a streak of tawny fur shot out from my driveway tumbling at her heels.

Twitter: @ClaireStares