The Fox and the Hound (19 page)
Then one evening Tod and the vixen came on a bonanza. In a slight depression half a mile from a farm, they found a dead sheep. Crows had already been feeding on it, and four-footed scavengers, for the snow around the carcass was polka-dotted with tracks.
Hungry as they were, the foxes did not go in, even though all signs showed that the carcass was innocent enough and not even their trained noses could detect the odor of man scent. They circled the carcass, testing every wisp of breeze from every angle, still not daring to approach within fifty yards, They returned the second night, and this time dared to come within twenty yards. A dog had been feeding on the sheep, tramping down the snow all around the body and leaving his heavy scent. Obviously nothing had happened to him. Even so, the foxes were not yet entirely convinced.
On the third night most of the sheep had been devoured, and the foxes could resist the odor of the meat no longer. The dog had been back, going straight into the carcass, as dogs will. Yet the foxes refused to go straight in. After circling the sheep several times, they headed for a little mound that overlooked the depression. From this eminence they could study the situation before making the final decision.
Wind had kept the top of the mound clear of snow. As they bounded up the slope, Tod abruptly checked. Something about the look of the bare earth bothered him. He had a feeling it had been disturbed. He stopped, rigid and sniffing. There was no man scent, yet could he or could he not detect the faintest smell of turned earth? Tod swung around to get the full strength of the night breeze. He still could not be sure, but he did not like the look of things. There was a certain quality about the bare patch that reminded him of the deadly V’s. He continued to hang back.
Unhesitatingly, the vixen ran to the top of the mound. She was too wary to approach the sheep, but the mound was isolated and safe enough. Tod saw the earth leap up, and even though he was twenty feet away he bounded back. He was rigid, his hair standing up with fright until he looked twice as big. The vixen went straight up into the air, fell, and tried to run, but the trap had her. Frantically she rushed to and fro; this time the stake chain was shorter, and she could not get up enough momentum to jerk free. She rolled on the snow, tore at the steel jaws, pulled and strained. It was useless.
Tod ran about helplessly. There was indeed nothing he could do. As the night went on, half a dozen other foxes came in, drawn by the fearful odor of terror and despair that went up from the doomed vixen. Like Tod, they rushed around aimlessly. They made no attempt to dig up the stake, help the vixen chew on the chain, or try to release her. Perhaps they were too afraid of the strange device. Even Tod, who understood traps well, was incapable of solving such a problem. Clever as Tod had been in learning how to spring traps, it had never occurred to him to pick up a stick in his mouth and hit the pan or even to roll a stone onto the pan with his nose - a simple feat for him. Tod could "reason" in a sense, but only in certain ways and in certain combinations of circumstances. He could not deduce by reason how a trap worked or the logical way of coping with one.
When dawn came, all the foxes left but Tod. He stayed with the gasping, beaten vixen until he saw the distant figure of the Man plodding over the light crust on snowshoes with his pack basket on his back and Copper at his heels. Then he slipped away. He returned that night, but the vixen was gone and the smell of death was heavy on the mound.
In December, Tod felt the old pulsing in his testicles, and once again he began to listen for the sound of a barking vixen and snuff the night winds. His old, reliable guides, the scent posts, were now largely useless to him, for he was suspicious of the smell of strange fox urine, which he associated with a trap. Although he spent hours barking from hilltops, no vixen answered him. Indeed, he heard few dog foxes. Several times Tod had found foxes in traps or come on a trap that held nothing but a chewed-off foot. The winter's trapping had decimated the fox population until there were only a few left. As a result, foraging was much better and finding food had again become a minor consideration for Tod.
By January, the few remaining dog foxes were in full rut, and desperate. Several of them drifted away to search for mates elsewhere, yet Tod stayed on. He hated to abandon his beloved range, and his nose told him there was no vixen in heat within a radius of fifteen miles.
Trotting down a well-padded trail by a laurel thicket, Tod suddenly smelled the odor he had been longing for - the scent of the urine of a vixen in heat. Instantly he burst into a wild run. The vixen had obviously squatted by a scent post only a few yards ahead, and the odor was so fresh she could not be long gone. Trailing her would be easy. Even as Tod broke into his full stride, he was knocked to one side, and another dog fox, maddened by the odor, tore past him. Raging, Tod sped after the white tip of his rival's brush. Only a few feet apart they shot along the trail.
Ahead, in a narrow part of the trail between two bushes, was a small tuft of meadow grass. This was the scent post, for the odor came from it. The vixen had crouched here to leave her mark before going on.
Even thought Tod was doing his utmost to pass his rival, the other fox kept ahead of him and reached the narrow section of the path first. Two sticks, a little more than a foot apart, had fallen across the path on either side of the tuft, and Tod's rival bounded over the first one. As his forefeet hit the ground, there came the now all too familiar sound of clashing jaws.
Tod twisted sideways and ran. Behind him he heard the other fox running, and this frightened him even more, The fox was running on three legs and Tod could hear the rattle of the chain and the bumping of the drag. He redoubled his efforts and found himself running alone. A thrashing in the laurels told him the drag had caught and the trapped animal was Hinging himself about among the tough stalks. Tod circled downwind and stopped to listen. Then he hurried away.
Toward dawn, Tod's ever-present curiosity made him return. His nose told him that there was a second dog fox in still another trap by the treacherous tuft of grass. Still wistfully hoping that a vixen might be involved in the business somehow, Tod lay up in the laurels, if only to sniff that thrilling perfume. Shortly after sunrise, he smelled the Man and Copper and then heard the hound's bay as he tracked down the two prisoners, both entangled by their drags in the bushes. After the Man and hound had gone, Tod returned to the fatal spot and examined it from a discreet distance. The vixen's urine had been replenished and the tom ground was now smooth again. Tod made no attempt at further examination. He knew well what lay beneath the innocent-looking earth and that there was no chance of finding a new mate here - only death.
A few nights later, Tod did scent a vixen. He followed the odor swiftly, yet not with the wild, impulsive speed he would once have shown, for he was now suspicious of everything. He found the vixen crouching in abject terror while a dog fox tried to mount her. She was young, and so starved her coat seemed to hang on her in folds. Her brush was ragged; her pads were worn and sore, her flanks hollow, her eyes hot. Even so, she was a vixen, and in season. Tod began to circle in his usual fashion, but the dog fox rushed him. At first Tod tried to hold him off with his long forelegs, and then lost his temper and fought. The two males were equally matched, and the fight raged through the blackberry bushes, down a bank, and among the trees until the combatants reached an open space where they both decided to have it out. The other fox was an old fighter, and the scars on his head showed white as the tension of his jaw muscles pulled the skin taut around his muzzle. He came in with open jaws. Tod, remembering his first fight, folded his forelegs under him and made a plunge for the stranger, sliding in on his belly. He fastened to a foreleg and began to shake. The stranger rolled with him; Tod lost his grip and the foxes broke apart.
Tod reared up and mounted the other fox from in front, grabbing him by the left stifle. The stranger fought savagely, planting his hind feet against the ground and straining to break the hold. There was no more hissing or screaming, only a subdued grumble as the foxes struggled together. The punishment was more than the stranger could take, and he turned his head away. That meant he was weakening. Tod himself could barely stand and his legs shook under him, but seeing his opponent turn gave him fresh confidence.
Both foxes now fought for the head and nose. Tod grabbed for the stranger's throat but missed, his jaws making an audible snap. Then he got his stifle hold again. He lay down to keep the stranger from getting to his throat and began to work his jaws in to reach the bone. The stranger was almost done by now, and covered with blood, yet he kept fighting. Tod shifted his hold to the other's belly, That did it. The stranger collapsed, lying as though dead, his jaws fixed in a snarl. For a few seconds Tod stood over him, fangs bared before contemptuously turning away. The defeated stranger continued to play dead until Tod was gone.
The vixen showed no more interest in Tod than she had in the other dog fox. She lay on the ground with hardly energy enough to snarl, and Tod, in spite of his frantic sexual urge, did not know what to do. She was so puppy-like and helpless that eventually Tod's memory of his own pups asserted itself and he went off, dug up a squirrel cache he remembered, and brought it back. When he returned he found another dog fox with the vixen, but this male fled at once at the sight of the tom, bloody, and furious Tod. Tod dropped the squirrel beside the vixen and then, retreating a few paces, sat down to watch. After a long, long time she ate it, snarling at him as she did so.
Mating did not take place until the next night, although Tod never left her side and had to drive off two other males during the long wait. The vixen behaved as though she had never been bred before, and whenever he approached her, she spun around to face him with open, grinning jaws. When it was over, she seemed to feel a great sense of relief. He brought her more food, and after that she followed him docilely enough, treading in his exact tracks and humbly accepting anything he offered her. He showed her his regular routes and the boundaries of his range, and by spring they were an old, established married couple.
Trapset after trapset was laid for him, but Tod avoided them all. He always came up to anything that could possibly be bait, even a frozen sparrow, with extreme caution; and no matter how ingeniously hidden the traps were, the Man had to leave some traces of scent, for he could not fly. He took to wearing rubber boots when he set his traps to avoid leaving any human scent in his tracks, but Tod came to associate the smell of rubber with the human, and avoided it. Often the boots themselves left almost no odor; but because the Man would walk through grass or weeds, enough of the plants adhered to the boots to alert Tod, for, just as he had learned to connect the odor of rubber with the Man, he learned to associate the odor of crushed herbage with the boots. No matter what precautions the Man took, Tod could detect his presence.
Trotting along the bank of a stream one evening, Tod caught the odor of cat. Of all foods, Tod especially liked cat. He had once found a dead cat thrown out on a garbage dump, and sampled it. It was delicious, and Tod had never forgotten the taste. He followed the smell as easily as a man would have followed a bright light, and found part of a nicely “high” cat on a tiny island in the stream a couple of feet from the bank.
Tod disliked getting his feet wet, and in spite of the cold stream was free-flowing, for it came from a spring trickling out of the hillside. Zigzagging back and forth to make sure he covered every inch of ground and got every flicker of scent, Tod worked his way in. He found that there were two of the tiny islands; the farthest one had the piece of cat lying on it, and the one nearest the bank was bare. By stepping on the nearest island, he could easily reach the cat.
Tod meticulously went up and down the bank, checking for man scent or signs. There were none. Then he crossed the stream by means of a fallen hemlock log and checked the farther bank. Still no signs. He crossed again and went back to look the situation over.
For all his cleverness it never occurred to Tod to wonder how a piece of cat could get on an island in a stream. He knew only that it was there and that there was positively no man scent. It had to be all right. Gingerly he advanced one forefoot onto the nearest island. It was so small there was only one place he could step.
As he bore down on his foot preparatory to reaching for the cat, he felt something crinkle under his pad. What it was Tod had no idea, but his lightning-quick reflexes made him spring back just as the trap went off. The jaws grazed his pad as he jumped. There lay the trap exposed, and with it was a piece of waxed paper that had been used to cover the trigger mechanism and keep it clear of dirt. Waxed paper had been used so the water would not dissolve it. It was the crinkling of the waxed paper that had warned him.
Tod left the bait alone. He did not know what other traps might be set there. Later, going far downstream, he came on the familiar scent of rubber boots where the Man, after wading along the brook to leave no scent on either bank, had at last come out.
Though Tod came on several of these water sets, he now knew about them, and was never tempted again. Finally, they disappeared.
Tod did discover there was plenty of good hunting along the banks of the stream, especially as spring progressed and animals coming out of hibernation went there to drink. He used the fallen hemlock log as a bridge, and after examining one bank would cross over and try the other. As he approached the log, he would make a quick run, leap on it from the side, and trot across, always putting his feet in the same places, then jump off.