Vulpes, the Red Fox

by Jean Craighead George

  Just as he was about to run through the field and frighten what prey there might be for Bubo, the wind blew a new sweet scent to him from the other end of the field.

  He bounded off to the corner of the field from which the scent came. He moved swiftly and quietly. The fox leapt high over the grasses. Then he froze. Just beyond him seven quail were sleeping. They slept in a small circle with their heads out so that they could keep each other warm. The circle also acted as a fortress. They could watch every direction for enemies. When danger threatened they could burst free, scattering North, East, South and West.

  Even though they were roosting in the open field, it would not be easy for Vulpes to catch them for they were nestled down at the roots of the tall dry grasses. Although they slept, any sounds that were foreign to the brush of the night winds would awake the quail. The slightest movement rustled the dried goldenrod and sweet-scented perilla. This sounded an alarm for the birds. With a burr of wings they would be off in the night.

  Vulpes inched his way ahead. His erect ears were pointed slightly forward. His quivering nose told him the way. With his keen eyes he searched the darkness. Frequently he stopped and crouched low in the grasses. Then he resumed his stalk. Vulpes did not make a sound. He picked up each foot quietly and carefully. As he put it down he shifted his weight cautiously.

  In this way he came within a few feet of the sleeping quail. He gathered his powerful hind feet beneath him and balanced himself for the spring. His flying leap carried him into the midst of the covey.

  There was a puff of feathered wings as the quail whirred up into the night. All but one. Vulpes had caught his prey.

  As he trotted off with his prize he could hear the other quail calling as they sought each other in the woods and fields. He wondered if Bubo heard their call to assemble. He knew that the old owl would quickly take advantage of the gathering covey. Vulpes thought that perhaps he had done Bubo a favor rather than mischief.

  He woke frequently during the night to shake the snow out of his fur. He would circle around for a few minutes, knocking it to the ground. Then he would settle back on his rock again and doze off. All night the flakes came down over Muddy Branch and the shores of the Potomac River.

  When Vulpes awoke in the morning, it was still snowing and the leaves were buried under the whiteness. He got up and stretched and started out to Muddy Branch. On the way he pounced in the snow and chased along the deserted river bottom, yapping and tossing the flakes into the air. His hind feet made white cascades. He would bury his nose in the clean snow and then blow it into the sky with a flip of his head. For hours the fox danced around in the deepening snowflakes.

  He ran out to the fields and looked across the farmlands. They were still and changed in this different world. Vulpes sat down by the fence and watched the cedar waxwings flying in clusters around the juniper trees searching for food in the winter morning. Their wistful, “Se-ee-ed, s-ee-d,” carried across the lonely snow-filled hills. A group of energetic chickadees flitted along the fence row. They darted from limb to limb. Vulpes watched them swing upside down as they quickly scouted the underside of a twig for insects. All the while they called to each other in their scolding, “Chick-a-dee, chick-a-dee, chick-a-dee-dee-dee.” A party of tufted titmice moved along with them. Their scolding notes blended with those of the chickadee. From the denser shrubby thickets came the musical tinks of the tree sparrows. Vulpes heard the pecking of the downy woodpecker and glanced toward the dead stub where the woodpecker was working. He saw a brown creeper drop from a high limb in a swooping flight to the base of a near-by tree. The creeper spiraled slowly up the trunk, searching the bark for insects. High in the tree tops flitted a loose flock of golden-crowned kinglets.

  Vulpes set out to look for food. He walked into the field and looked at the bottom of every clump of grass where mice might be. Then he zig-zagged back and forth to search the small mounds in the snow. The mice were under the white blanket, working their way around the field looking for seeds and roots. As they went they made little puffy tunnels that branched out and threaded the field with avenues of snow mounds. When he caught a hot scent Vulpes would pounce on the end of these plowed hills and dig down into the snow to find his quarry.

  The story of his search for mice was left behind him in the snow. With each adventure his trail marked what he had done. All across the field the tell-tale pattern lay in busy footsteps.

  The snow was falling more slowly now. Except for a few small flakes, it had almost stopped. Down the river, below Muddy Branch, old Will Stacks, the trapper, sat on the edge of his iron bed. He rubbed his eyes and looked through the window of his shack at the snow.

  Will put on his long woolen underwear and pulled on a pair of old warm trousers. After he had put on his boots and tucked his pant legs down into them, he built a fire in the old potbellied stove. While it roared and crackled he made a pot of coffee.

  Will Stacks was a lean man of about fifty. He wasn’t very tall, but was strong and wiry. He had a slight stoop and a bright shock of sandy-brown hair that was growing white around the temples. His face was tanned by the wind and sun until it had grown leathery and lined with deep wrinkles. Will Stacks lived alone in his little whitewashed shack on River Road. He trapped all fall and part of the winter, and all summer he fished on the breaks.

  When Stacks had finished his cereal, he pulled on a sweater and opened the door to look at the weather. It was still snowing and the air was quite warm.

  He went back to his oak table, sat down on a bench he had made one winter during idle hours, and sipped a hot drink. He thought about the traps that he would use today for foxes. Will trapped many animals: muskrats, mink, skunks and otter. This day, however, he would set them only for the red fox as he knew their furs were in their prime in December.

  Will kept his traps in a slanting shed that opened off his one-room house. They hung from the wall or were kept in boxes according to size and type. There were some for foxes with big iron jaws; there were smaller ones for mink. Around the shed hung the tanned skins of many animals.

  When Will had seen the snowstorm coming the day before, he had spent the afternoon checking his pack-basket and equipment to see that he had all the scents, lures and other things ready. Though it was more difficult to trap in the snow, from his long years of experience old Will Stacks knew just how to do it. The snow was perfect. It was fluffy and crisp, and the weather was not cold enough to crust the top or to freeze the spring of the trap.

  Earlier in the year Will Stacks had mixed a brew that he had devised through the years, and had dropped his traps into it to remove the smell of steel. He made it by placing a big kettle on the stove and putting in it sassafras and maple bark, walnut hulls and various wood chips.

  After he had done that, he spent one whole week brewing the lure, by a secret formula that his father had passed on to him. No one, not even his friend Buck Queen, knew how he made the scent which lured the fox off his trail and over to his trap. It was brewed from the musky glands of the muskrat to which fish oil and rancid butter were added. To this a few drops of skunk essence was added and an ounce or so of fox scent. Several drops of glycerine made it hold its odor in the rain and snow.

  When it was completed, Stacks poured it in a little jar and kept it in the cool shed.

  Will finished his cereal and put on his big mackinaw. He went into the shed and picked up his trapping basket, slung it over his lean shoulders and walked out into the snow.

  The trapper had favorite locations for his fox traps. These he had found through years of trapping and hunts with Buck Queen during which the two men had studied the hills and glens the foxes roved.

  He knew that the red fox liked the hills and abandoned fields where the grass was not too thick and heavy. He did not like the wet thicket regions where the gray fox moved, but kept to the open trails of other animals.

  Sometimes he set his traps so far away that he had to take his car and drive four or five miles to the
locations. Others were on the hillsides nearer home and he would walk to these in all weather. Will had about ten traps out already and this morning he was going to set three more. He planned to place them in and around Muddy Branch.

  Crossing the field, he saw Vulpes’ tracks in the snow. He studied them carefully to see where he had gone and what he had been doing. The zigzagged trail told him that Vulpes had been hunting for mice under the snow. He also saw where he had followed a rabbit. If he had caught him, Stacks knew the fox would eat only what he needed and cache the remainder in a scooped-out pit in the earth. Later he would return and finish it.

  Will imitated these store holes in his trappings. He went over to the fence row where Vulpes had slipped under the rail to the open field. Here he put down his pack and took out his trowel. He dug into the snow, being careful to stand in the same footsteps he made as he approached. Vulpes was crafty and Will Stacks knew it. He had to be clever to fool him. The snow was only a few inches deep by the fence, so he dug down into the earth just far enough to seat the trap firmly.

  Then he made a small hole for the bait just above the trap and put in a piece of rabbit. He drove a stake into the ground to which the open trap was chained. It sank into the bare ground, and Stacks placed the trap over it, setting it solidly in earth. He carefully wrapped up the dirt he had removed in a canvas cloth and put it in his pack. He knew he must not leave any dirt around or Vulpes would become suspicious.

  Now, he replaced the snow around the jaws of the trap. He took great care not to let the snow slide under the trigger for if the trigger was jammed with snow or earth, the trap would not spring. With a little piece of paper as a guard he dropped the snow around the jaws. Then he filled up the hole until it looked as if a fox had dug it. He opened his bottle of scent and put a few drops of the potent lure over the traps. He had finished his work.

  Old Will Stacks stood up and walked away. His trail through the snow looked as if he had not stopped to make the trap setting. He did it quickly so that his own scent would not linger around the spot.

  Will looked up at the sky. By the blue-gray clouds he knew it would snow again before night. Perhaps it would be a light snow and the last scent of his trail would be covered. It would then be a perfect set.

  He hurried down through the woods to Muddy Branch, walking surely and unhesitatingly to an open spring on the side of a hill. He had used this spot before and had caught many foxes here. He called this a water trap. He would place stepping stones in the spring which led to his lure as he knew the red fox did not like to get his feet wet. The fox would use these to approach the bait.

  Old Will Stacks set his second trap, rose and disappeared through the woods.

  Meanwhile, about half a mile away, Vulpes was sleeping on a log on a hillside protected from the wind and snow. Vulpes had left the field where he had been searching for mice and had trotted off toward the woods in pursuit of game.

  He had followed the trail of a rabbit into the woods, leaving the pattern in the snow that Will Stacks had seen.

  As the rabbit scent grew warmer, Vulpes trailed his prey more cautiously. He was running easily now over the deep snow. Whenever he reached a vantage point as he closed in on his prey, he would stop and look over the woods. Here and there were clues left behind the hopping cottontail. He had girdled the young shoots of the shrubby hazelnuts. In places Vulpes could see where he had snipped the twigs in half. Beneath the wild roses and berry bushes the leaves were scattered over the snow. The rabbit had dug down to the ground to find any berries that might have fallen to the earth.

  Then the trail would lead on. The big hind feet of the cottontail made long tracks in the white snow as he hopped along. They were punctuated with smaller tracks of his front feet.

  On many occasions Vulpes had learned the speed that these long hind legs gave the rabbit. The rabbit was the only woodland creature who could match or better the speed of Vulpes. He knew that if he had to meet him in an open chase the rabbit would probably gain the safety of some burrow before he could catch him. But the fox knew he was more than a match in wits with the cottontail.

  On a hillside the rabbit trail led off into a thicket of laurel. Here the footsteps were farther apart as the rabbit had sped from the swoop of a Cooper’s hawk. Vulpes came closer. He could see where the hawk had actually landed in the snow and had followed him into the thicket with the relentless savage fury of an accipiter.

  The fox looked closely to see if the hawk had got his prey. But the rabbit’s trail wound through the gnarled shrub trunks to a little crevasse in some rocks where he had taken shelter. The warm scent still hung under the heavy canopy of leaves. There was a little scoop in the snowy leaves where the warm body of the cottontail had melted the flakes. When his enemy had flown off, the rabbit had come out of his hiding place and loped off again through the woods. Vulpes picked up his trail on the other side of the laurel thicket and followed him down the hill to the valley.

  The rabbit seemed to be following an old game trail that led down the side of the hill. Vulpes began to calculate the manner in which he would outwit the speedy rabbit. He thought of the cottontail’s big eyes set far back on either side of his head. With them he could detect any movement in almost any direction. Vulpes thought at times that he must be able to see behind him, he was so quick to jump. Then he decided what he would do. He would circle the trail the rabbit was following and lie in wait along it and take him by surprise as he came hopping along looking for food. He must do it quickly for the wind would be blowing his scent toward the rabbit if he got below him.

  Vulpes sniffed the air. The rabbit was not far ahead. With a flash he skirted the crest of the hill and came down into the valley. He was below the rabbit. Cunningly he selected a spot for his ambush. It was off to the side of the old game trail where he could watch the path. A slight wind blew his telltale scent off to the side. A patch of snow-covered laurel leaves concealed his bright orange-red fur on the side where the rabbit would approach. He waited patiently.

  Presently he saw the rabbit coming along the trail, his nose quivering in the air as he sought out the tender saplings.

  Vulpes was ready. When the rabbit came in range he sprang. It was over. His chase was won.

  Vulpes finished his meal and curled up on a log on the hillside. Under the snow not far from the log lay the food he had not eaten. With his slender black feet he had scraped away the frosted flakes of snow and had dropped it in the hole. He had covered it carefully with the snow using his nose as a shovel. When he was hungry he would come back for the rest of his meal. His cache looked very much like the trap set old Will Stacks had made along the edge of the field. But Vulpes did not know of the threat and slept easily for several hours.

  Again in the late afternoon the leaden skies spilled their burden. First a fine splatter of chilled raindrops fell. A few snowflakes came with the rain. But with the cold of the gathering darkness, the rain turned to sleet and the snow grew thicker. Finally, hailstones formed high in the sky and lent their force of violence to the storm. The rain, sleet, snow and hail rasped through the countryside. The sound of their impact on the fallen snow droned through the fields and woods.

  Old Will Stacks, the trapper, sat before the fireplace in his cabin. He listened to the rising fury of the storm as it beat against the roof above him. He walked to the curtainless window and looked out into the night. He scowled. This weather was not good. It would spoil his carefully made trap sets. Within a few hours, a thick crust of iced snow would cover the woodlands and settle over his traps. He had worked hard to make them spring with lightning swiftness. Now the icy crust would slow or even jam the action of his traps. He would have to reset them all in the morning and he didn’t relish the task. He toyed with the idea of taking them in and ending the season. Already he had many prime pelts hanging in the cool shed that would bring good prices in the city. It had been a good season.

  He went to his cupboard and took down some potatoes and beans to b
oil for supper.

  “A poor set is worse than none at all,” he mumbled as he pared the vegetables. “A bad set won’t catch a thing. Merely scare the animal away and make him wise to my tricks. Guess I’ll wait till morning and see if I should quit for the year.”

  Vulpes was roused from his slumbers by the storm. He raised his head and squinted into the night. The misty vapors of the bottoms were creeping up the floor of the valley. He heard the groaning creaks of heavy limbs sagging beneath the weight of the storm. Nothing was stirring in the woods. All the animals had sought shelter. The woodchucks and chipmunks were sleeping away the winter cold in their snug burrows deep in the earth. Bubo, the great horned owl, had sought his perch in a thick patch of evergreens. Vison, the mink, had slipped into his den along the creek. Procyon, the raccoon, stayed in his home in a hollow tree. In the bottoms, Urocyon, the gray fox, was curled in a hollow log.

  Only Vulpes still lingered in the open. For a moment he thought of a den he had found in the rocks near-by. Then he dismissed the thought and tucked his nose beneath his warm bushy tail and pulled the bare pads of his feet close to his body. Now his thick tail covered the only exposed parts of his body—his nose and foot pads. For the moment he was quite comfortable and he went back to sleep. As the storm roared on, however, his log in the open became less pleasant. The wet sleet and rain dampened his coat. At times he found his fur freezing to the log. This annoyed him. He got up and trotted to the den in the rocks. He slipped beneath an overhanging rock that formed the entrance and curled up on the dry leaves and twigs. Soon his rhythmic breathing told he was asleep. Outside the storm blew on.