The Fox and the Hound (27 page)

Tod was now raging. He reared up, striking stiff-legged at his opponent and looking for a good hold. Before he could close, the door of the house was thrown open and a man came out shouting. Instantly Tod was a fleeting shadow headed for the yew hedge. He slipped through, turned to the side, and ran along it. He could look through the bare stems, and to his astonishment he saw the strange fox turn and charge the man. The man kicked him away and then dodged back in the house, slamming the door behind him. The last Tod saw of the raving animal, he was charging again and again into the door in a frenzy of pointless rage.

A week later, he saw another of these uncanny animals. A flock of pigeons came down in the early morning to feed in a small field that had not yet known the bulldozer's blade; and by

hiding in a sassafras patch, Tod could occasionally catch a cock intent on courting a demure hen. Below the field a new concrete sidewalk ran to a corrugated shack where children collected each morning until they were picked up by a gigantic bus.

Lying in his sassafras ambush, Tod was watching a flock of pigeons feeding, and especially a cock with his throat swelled out to show its iridescent colors for the benefit of a slender little hen who was trying to pick up bits of seed without being mounted by her admirer. A group of children walked along the sidewalk, shouting and talking, but neither Tod nor the pigeons paid any attention to them. Tod was still concentrating on the cock when he heard the children scream.

At the shrill sound, the flock took to the air with a hard rustle of wings and Tod looked in annoyance at the children. Most of them were running frantically, giving ear-piercing shrieks that Tod instantly recognized as cries of mortal terror. A few were dancing backward, the girls with their skirts wrapped around their knees and the boys kicking wildly. A strong wind was blowing from the children to Tod, and immediately he smelled such an odor of abject fear that he sprang to his feet.

The slim form of a fox was darting among the children, biting right and left as he turned. At each flicker of his head, a horrible screech went up from the bitten child. Not daring to look away from their insane foe, the children tried to run backward, often falling down or colliding with one another. The fox seemed to be everywhere at once. Tod could tell from his actions that he was slashing with his canines rather than biting, and doing terrible execution.

A little girl tripped and fell. At once the fox turned from the other children and sprang at her. There was no slashing here - the fox tore at the child's arms and legs in a delirium of fury. Paralyzed by terror, the girl lay helpless, squealing like a rabbit. The other children, free at last of their tormentor, turned and ran.

Adults were coming, mostly women who as soon as they saw what was happening screamed louder than the child. Several of them rushed at the fox, who promptly turned on them. Now indeed the women screamed, leaping to avoid the attacks and trying to run in their turn, but they were almost as helpless as the children. One found a stick and lashed at the fox wildly. The insane creature easily avoided the blows and, slipping in, locked his teeth in her ankle. She plunged forward on her face, her fearful cries sounding even above the squalling of the others.

The wailing moan of a siren sounded, and a car tore up with a flashing, rotating light on top. Two men sprang out and went toward the women. The fox attacked them, but these men had some sort of guards on their feet that made it difficult for him to take hold. Tod saw the men kick and jump backward. Then he heard a succession of revolver shots and saw the fox knocked kicking onto the ground. The men fired again and again into the now lifeless body. When they finally stopped, the place was a shambles. Children were limping about, sobbing and moaning. Women sat on the ground, clutching their bitten legs. Several people had gone to the little girl who had taken the full brunt of the attack. She lay on her back, drumming on the ground with her open hands. When the breeze carried the acrid stench of gunpowder to Tod, he slid away. He was both curious and frightened. He could not conceive what had happened.

Almost nightly Tod in his wanderings smelled the odor of other foxes. Formerly he would have ignored them or even driven them away, but now he fled from them. Something awful was going on, although he did not know what. Once he saw a fox appear out of nowhere and attack some clothes hanging on a line to dry. A wind was making the clothes wave, and the frenzied animal tore at the cloth, covering it with the gluey saliva that clung to his jaws. A woman rushed out of the house yelling, and the fox spun around and went for her. Tod heard the woman's hysterical screams as he galloped away. When he went back to the sassafras thicket in the hope of finding a pigeon in the field, he saw that the children on their way to the bus were surrounded by men armed with guns and clubs.

In spite of all his precautions, Tod was once attacked by one of these lunatic foxes. Confident of his great speed, Tod ran from the animal at an easy lope, but to his astonishment the raving animal sped after him at such a terrific pace that Tod had to exert his best powers to escape. For a quarter of a mile his lunatic pursuer was close on his brush. Then the maddened animal's speed slacked. When Tod finally stopped to look around, he saw the fox spinning in circles, slashing at himself until he dropped. The creature lay there, his muzzle strained upward, his head twisted to one side, his legs kicking wildly.

Other animals were also affected. Tod was attacked by squirrels, rats, and once even by a rabbit. This was too much, and he killed these mad creatures with a swift, expert nip before they could bite him. He also met several dogs in the grip of the frenzy, but he could easily avoid these clumsy brutes.

There were several buildings with towers, and bells rang in these towers at certain times, always in light peals that Tod had grown to recognize. Now these same bells rang nearly every day, and sometimes several times a day, but with deep, slow, muted voices. Long trains of cars moved slowly away from the buildings at such times, keeping their lights on even though it was day. An atmosphere of terror hung over the district that Tod could vaguely sense. He stayed as deep as he could in the few remaining woods, living largely on mice and on an occasional bird.

Traps began to reappear, and soon they were everywhere. Traps no longer bothered Tod, for he knew them too well; but often he passed foxes caught in them, exhausted creatures sinking with panic, their jaws bloody from chewing on the iron. Then he began to come across dead foxes and other animals lying in open fields or along the hedges. They were rigid, their lips curled into a snarl, and when he sniffed at them there was an acid odor clinging to their mouths that he soon came to associate with their deaths.

Game was scarce, and Tod was delighted to run across some small balls of lard lying along one of his routes. Tod was not especially hungry at the moment, so he picked up one and, instead of swallowing it at once, carried it in his mouth, looking for a good place to bury it. He chased a rabbit, dropping the pill in his excitement, and when the rabbit escaped down a hole, went back for the ball. The ball had broken open, and Tod smelled the same acid odor he had detected on the dead foxes. Tod rolled it over with one foot thoughtfully. He was of two minds what to do, and might have swallowed the ball after all if he had not heard the angry squeaking of two fighting mice some ten yards away. In three bounds Tod had reached the spot and by a quick bite managed to get both of the contestants. Delighted with himself, he trotted on, forgetting the ball.

The next night his hunting was unsuccessful, and he went back to look for it. The ball was gone; and after sniping about, Tod picked up the line of. a cat. The cat must have eaten his ball; and Tod, feeling that he had been robbed, followed the trail. He did not have far to go. Halfway through a wire fence was the cat, cold dead. The desperate animal had managed to worm himself that far before collapsing.

The cat had been almost entirely eaten by crows during the day, and the stomach had been tom open. It reeked heavily of the same acid odor, so Tod left it alone. As he walked through the darkness, his nose near the ground to pick up any useful scents, a shadow flickered over him. Tod crouched automatically, but the shadow was a barn owl, a harmless bird as far as Tod was concerned. He heard a terrified squeak and sprinted forward, hoping to rob the bird of his mouse-kill or, better yet, get both owl and mouse, but the owl was already in the air when he arrived. There was a dead crow there, partly eaten by mice. It must have been one of these feeding mice the owl had caught. Tod did not care for crow; and besides, the bird also had the acid odor, although now quite faint. He kept on.

Just at dawn he managed to catch one of the few remaining rabbits, and started for his lying-up place. On the way, he shied abruptly from a dark mass at the foot of a cottonwood. The barn owl lay there dead, and a skunk was eating it. Tod tried unsuccessfully to drive the skunk away, but the wood pussy refused to move, stamping with his forefeet and keeping his tail with its white tip extended rigidly in the air. Tod was far too wise to risk being blinded by the skunk's musk, so he finally left it alone.

The next night he returned to the spot and found the remains of the dead skunk beside the owl. Both animals had been almost completely devoured by scavengers, and a few feet away was a dead blue jay, quite untouched, so Tod made a meal of that. He had gone only a few hundred yards before wrenching paroxysms of pain gripped him. Tod instantly vomited the entire contents of his stomach, and as the food came up he could taste a faint suggestion of the acid. The spasms came repeatedly, while Tod strained so violently to vomit again he brought up smears of blood. The convulsions returned at regular intervals, and each time that Tod thought he had at last freed himself of the poison they came again, while he writhed on the ground, biting at his own stomach in his agony. By dawn he was so weak he could hardly move, but he was still alive. He managed to crawl under some bushes, and lay there, semiconscious, until nightfall. It was two days before he had recovered enough to hunt again.

By now the woods and fields were full of dead or dying animals, but Tod left them severely alone. He lived on a vegetable diet. He finally picked up enough courage to kill a muskrat he found badly wounded from a fight, and after carefully smelling the animal all over, dared to eat it. He suffered no ill effects, so he caught a rabbit. That was all right too, so he resumed his hunting; but never again would he eat any dead animal, no matter how hungry he might be.

Wild animals were not the only victims of the poison pellets. Several times Tod found dogs whose horribly distorted bodies showed how they had died in torture. Near a road, he came on some hog cracklings thrown about, and was examining them when he heard the voices of children and stole into a hedge. From his hiding place he saw the children stop and a little boy pick up one of the cracklings and chew it. The children continued on, and Tod was about to go about his own affairs when he heard the boy begin screaming. Tod stopped to listen. He heard the anxious cries and questions of the other children, and then the screams stopped. Tod knew what had happened; he had been hearing similar screams followed by sudden silences from wild animals for the past weeks.

The wholesale destruction was incredible, and for a while it seemed to Tod that all life had been swept away. But the rabbits, gray squirrels, muskrats, and most songbirds remained, and Tod was still able to exist. There were even some foxes left, animals who, like Tod, had been smart enough or lucky enough to discover the danger and avoid it. They took refuge in the few patches of cover still left, and lived as best they could. Mean- while the lard balls and hog cracklings disappeared; after the death of the boy, Tod saw men driving around in cars and collecting the poisoned bait. He had seen no rabid animals of any kind for a long time now, and perhaps the time of terror was over.

Shortly after sunup, while Tod was lying on his oak ridge, he saw a long procession of cars driving slowly down a back road that had been newly hard-surfaced. Tod had never seen so many cars before, and he lay watching them with both ears cocked. He was ordinarily not afraid of cars, but this seemed to be something new. The cars stopped, and many of the people got out, lining up along the road. They all carried sticks, and several had guns.

One man moved forward in front of the group, opening a large piece of paper. He talked to the crowd, pointing to the paper and then to different parts of the ridge, woods, and fields. When he finished, the people spread out in a long line and started to move across the field.

Tod waited to see no more. He slipped over the ridge and cantered away at a long, swinging lope. He was not unduly disturbed, but he decided to get away.

He ran to the next ridge, stopped, and looked back. There was no sign of the people, so Tod, his mind now at ease, continued at a walk.. He reached the top of the ridge and froze to a stop. Coming toward him was another long line of people, also carrying sticks and guns.

This was alarming. Tod had learned long ago not to give way to panic, and now instead of running he stood poised and watching. The people were coming slowly, stopping to examine every ditch and furrow, bending over patches of soft earth, and sometimes shouting excitedly and pointing with their sticks at the ground. Tod could not imagine what they were doing, but he did not like the look of things at all.

Above him came a loud drone, but Tod did not bother to look up. He knew it was one of the huge, noisy things that passed by in the sky occasionally but never did any harm. This time the Hying thing did not pass on as they usually did, but circled and came back over the ridge, its shadow sweeping over Tod and making him wince.