The Fox and the Hound (14 page)

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Third Hunt - Gassing

Spring was raw and wet that year, and the vixen, used to living in the protection of heavy cover, suffered especially. While Tod was content to lie out in the worst of weathers, the vixen south of the shelter of overhanging rocks and during especially heavy storms even went down holes. This conduct bothered Tod as he regarded it not only as most unfoxlike but also dangerous; if you were under the overshoot of a rock you couldn't see what was coming up behind you, especially as heavy rain killed scent, and going down a burrow was even worse - you might be trapped down there by terriers. Tod remembered his own childhood experience vividly. None of these considerations bothered the vixen, as she had been brought up in a wilder district where men were scarce and dogs nonexistent. If Tod had been an older more decided male she might have followed his example. As it was, she went her own way.

Tod became far more conscious of his territorial rights than ever before, and in this he was amply abetted by the vixen. The growth of sperm in his testicles during the rutting season made him combative; and instead of regarding visiting foxes with goodnatured curiosity, he now considered them thieves and invaders. For a while foxes without a territory of their own could avoid him by checking the scent posts and seeing when Tod would be on a certain section of his range at a given time, for with their marvelous sense of smell they could tell when a post had been used within an hour or so. As it took Tod three or four days to make the complete round of his range, they hunted before or after he made his tour. Now, however, the thought of poachers so infuriated Tod that he altered his once rigid schedule to catch interlopers. Even though the trespasser was bigger and stronger than Tod, he would seldom put up even a token resistance, but fled at once, for he recognized Tod’s property rights as laid out by the scent posts. In his fury, Tod would often pursue the stranger off his range, but as soon as the interloper was well clear of his marker territory, he would slow down and eventually turn to fight. When that happened, Tod, who had been blind with rage, would suffer a change of heart. The two foxes would slowly revolve around each other, side to side and head to tail, ready to feint with their brushes or knock the opponent over with a flank bump. Nearly always the duel ended with both combatants gingerly edging apart, scratching contemptuously with hind feet, and defiantly urinating before going their separate ways.

It was the vixen who goaded Tod to keep poachers off his range. From her actions at the scent posts, Tod knew she violently resented trespassers, and he tried to observe her wishes. Tod's anger was directed toward other males; he had no feelings toward females, and whenever he came upon a visiting vixen he was polite to her - if she was still in season, more than polite. He soon discovered that his mate viciously resented this chivalrous attitude he considered so natural. Once she came upon him sniffing courteously at the hindquarters of a cowering, squalling vixen, and at once attacked the husband-stealer with an insane frenzy that horrified Tod. The strange vixen, nothing loath, went at her with equal fury. Tod watched aghast while the two vixens tore at each other, screaming at the top of their voices and observing none of the etiquette of fox fighting. The strange vixen soon went down before the murderous intensity of his mate's delirium, and Tod expected to see her give the formal token of surrender by presenting her jugular - a signal that was always acknowledged and respected among males, Nothing like this happened. His mate got the foreigner by the back of the neck and shook her until the victim's eyes rolled up, her hind legs kicked convulsively, and she finally lay limp. Even then the maddened vixen did not give up, but worried the body until all sign of life was gone. Finally she dropped the corpse on the bloody snow and limped stiffly away with the awestruck Tod following behind her. Tod could not know that she was not fighting for prestige or simply for sport, as did the males, but for her mate; and the mate was now all-important, for new life would soon be stirring within her and she had to have the male to hold the range and provide food for the pups when they were born. Under these conditions, she would kill anything that stood in her way.

As March came on, Tod was well past the rut, and his belligerency declined while the vixen's increased. There would have to be plenty of food on the range for the pups as they grew, but she savagely begrudged every mouse taken by poachers. Tod had never before known what hatred was; he had never hated the quarry he killed any more than he hated the apples he ate, nor did he hate the hounds that chased him or the men who tried to kill him - he feared and dreaded them as he might fear a bolt of lightning striking near him, but he did not hate the lightning. Now he learned to hate other foxes with a deep, fanatic intensity of purpose that would last until autumn when the pups were on their own. He did not know why he hated these strangers except that it was his nature to do so, and the vixen encouraged him.

        Coming from an area where food was scarce, the vixen wanted him to maintain a range some five miles square; but as Tod soon discovered, there were several other dog foxes in the district who were mated to vixens with similar expansive ideas, and good hunting preserves were limited. Fighting broke out all along the boundary lines, and even though the combats never had serious results, the males soon became tired of the business. By an unspoken agreement they reduced their ranges to areas of about a square mile, which in a land flowing with mice and rabbits was ample. The vixens did not approve of this compromise; but after all it was the males who had to do the fighting, so they were forced to accept the limited ranges.

        So far, the vixen had kept her slender shape and was as active as ever, although she no longer liked to play with him. Tag had been their favorite game, and they would chase each other for twenty minutes at a time over the fields and through the open woods. Now she began to grow heavy and inactive. She also became increasingly quick-tempered. The growing pups were draining the calcium from her system to make their bones, and the loss made her weak and irritable.

        She started to show remarkable interest in burrows, investigating and often enlarging every one she found. In one such burrow she encountered a large woodchuck, just emerging from his winter’s sleep. Tod could have told her that such an animal was best left alone, but in her overwrought mood the vixen attacked him. She was so far down the burrow that only the white tip of her brush was showing, and Tod, dancing around eagerly outside, heard her screams of anger followed by the grunts and teeth-chattering of the chuck. As the underground battle raged and the inflaming odor of adrenaline rose, Tod dug desperately through the half-frozen earth to squeeze down and get at the chuck himself. To his astonishment, the vixen turned on him. Both foxes burst out of the burrow, screaming at each other, rearing up on their hind legs, their teeth clashing together. For once Tod was in the same blind passion as the vixen, and grabbed her by the loins, he clamped down until his long canines drew blood. Instead of being cowed, the vixen continued to fight. The taste of fox blood brought Tod to his senses. He turned and ran, pursued by the screaming vixen. He could easily outdistance her, and kept a few yards ahead of the hysterical termagant until she dropped, panting and exhausted. Tod stopped and stood regarding her gravely until she recovered from the fit and they could resume normal relations.

        After enlarging and then abandoning what seemed to Tod innumerable burrows, the vixen at last settled on an empty woodchuck hole in a cover of scrub oaks on the extreme northern edge of the range. The burrow was small, but the vixen dug it out to suit her needs, loosening the earth with her forefeet and then kicking it out with her hind. Even when finished, the den was a modest affair. The main room, the highest part of the den for drainage purposes, was only two feet square; there was only one entrance, and the passageway was a little more than ten feet.

        Tod highly disproved of this whole arrangement. His home den had been much bigger and more elaborate. It had comprised a network of passages, some fifty feet long, and the main room had been twenty by thirty feet. Also it had been located on the side of a hill, as all proper fox dens should be, so the occupants could see for miles around. Tod’s home den had been inhabited and enlarged by generations of foxes, and this new, cramped den struck him as a regular death trap. He hated cover anyway, and the vixen had deliberately picked the densest cover she could find. However, there was no arguing with a female, as Tod had discovered, and he was forced to accept the vixen’s choice.

        The vixen spent a great deal of time remodeling the den and even on occasion allowed Tod to help her, although quarrels became so frequent she preferred to do most of the work herself. Both foxes had begin to shed their winter coats, and while the long outer hairs came out easily, the thick undercoat matted and clung to them in gray, cotton-like tangles that could not be bitten free. The itching annoyed them and did nothing to steady their already volatile tempers. The vixen was now so swollen she had trouble getting in and out the narrow entrance, and finally she made it clear to Tod his presence was unnecessary. Tod was too curious about what was going on to leave the den area entirely, so he fell into the habit of lying up some fifty yards from the entrance during the day. Before going out on his nightly rounds, he could stop by, sniff at the hole, and cock his head to listen; but neither scent nor sound told him anything except that a very irritable vixen was within.

        One evening as Tod walked toward the den, he stopped suddenly in his usual attitude of alert; head up and one foot raised. He had heard a series of whining yelps coming from the burrow’s opening. After a brief hesitation, Tod trotted closer, and sniffed. Yes, there were strange new smells there, and the whining was distinct. Neither the sounds nor scents were foxy, and if Tod could have gotten in, he might well have made short work of the new arrivals, not knowing what they were. He was saved from such infanticide by the vixen, who thrust her nose partway out of the burrow, hissing and snarling. Tod leaped back, landing on all four feet at the same time, and hastily withdrew. Hunting was good that night, and Tod caught a superabundance of rabbits. Knowing the vixen must be hungry, he carried one back to the den with him as a peace offering. Dropping it a few yards from the den entrance, he called her, hoping she would come out and play, for in spite of his Independence Tod was growing a bit lonely. The vixen stuck her head out but refused to leave the burrow even when Tod tempted her with the rabbit, yet he could tell by the way she sniffed that she was ravenously hungry. At last he was reluctantly forced to bring the rabbit to her. She snatched it without any of the usual friendly byplay both indulged in when sharing food, and dragged it into the den with her. Listening, Tod heard an outburst of the yelping cries, and wondered more and more what was down there.

        Even though he brought her food faithfully every night, it was not until two weeks later that she allowed him to come partway down the passageway to inspect her treasures. There were five of them, covered in mouse-colored fur, blind, squirming, and helpless. They were not much bigger than mice, and probably equally eatable, but from the actions of the vixen it was obvious she considered them the most remarkable creatures ever to inhabit the earth. She walked over to them, nudged them with her nose (an act that produced a storm of excited yelps), and then lay on her side with her feet toward them so they could nurse The blind pups crawled toward her, throwing their heads from side to side, mewing loudly, and clearly guided by the warmth of the vixen’s body rather than by sight or smell. As they came with in reach, she moved them against her with swipes of her long nose. One little fellow got headed in the wrong direction until at last the vixen had to rise, pick him up gingerly in her mouth, and bring him back to the others. Then she lay down again, spread her legs until each of the babies found a teat and started sucking. The pups nursed by pushing on either side of the teat with their tiny paws and sometimes jerking back with their heads to make the milk flow. The mother watched them with an expression of utter delight as their tiny mouths nursed the milk from her swollen glands and relieved the intolerable pressure that had been tormenting her. When they finished, she pay back reveling in the blissful feeling of relaxation, as though a throbbing pain had suddenly eased.

        Now that Tod had been allowed to see the miracle that she had wrought, he was again forbidden the den, but Tod had seen enough to make him wildly proud and excited. He realized that these tiny, helpless creatures belonged to him, and he wore himself out bringing food to the den, often far more than the vixen could eat. Feathers began to accumulate on the yellow earth that had come from the hole, and formed a half-circle in front of the den’s entrance. There were also the hides of woodchucks, neatly turned inside out; rabbit legs and some lambs’ tails. Tod had not killed the lambs, he had collected the tails from the pasture aster the lambs had been ringed and the tails had fallen off. Both foxes always kept an eye out for a lambing ewe, not because they had designs on the lamb, but because they liked to eat the afterbirth. Afterbirths were impregnated with fetal fluid for which all mammals have a passion, and it was to obtain the fetal fluid that mothers licked their newborn offsprings so carefully. Tod found several afterbirths, but he always ate them himself, bringing other food back to the vixen. There was a limit to masculine devotion.