Other people have stray cats or dogs follow them home but with my daughter Anna it isn’t that simple. Last week it was three of the saddest donkeys I’ve ever seen, stringing along behind her elbow as we strolled in the New Forest. Only a fairly hefty five-barred gate prevented them, I am sure, from climbing into the back of the car with us. Low-voiced, she whispered her farewells into big receptive ears. A sort of donkey Esperanto passed between them – the kind of language that comes easily to a small, serious girl of seven who loves animals.
Our cat will come and lean against me at mealtimes, but Anna is the one he really loves, the one whose bed he sleeps on when I pretend I haven’t really noticed, or hides under when his popularity is at a low ebb.
Horses take to her, and big, slow Jess, the retriever next door, pads along beside her when we go to the shops. Even tiddlers seem to leap willingly into her fishing-net on soggy, streamside afternoons, and I’ve got used to doing without my other washing-up bowl now that it has become a makeshift pond for various jerky little water creatures.
So I wasn’t really surprised when a baby fox cub lurched up to her and sat barking beseechingly on her foot. We were out for a walk on a nearby hillside and I, who had expected to come back with a few wild flowers, had not thought that we would gather up a tiny, mysterious bundle of abandoned earth-grey fur.
Gingerly we picked it up. It was about three or four weeks old, a bit muddy and very nearly ready to give up the unequal struggle for survival. Looking anxiously round, I caught sight of a woman pegging out washing in the valley below us. We weren’t too sure if he was a fox or a puppy so we called to the woman to see if anyone was likely to claim him.
She didn’t know anything about it. She sounded exasperated. It had kept them all awake, she said, crying through the night – out on the hillside.
So we headed for home with Foxy held close to my daughter’s anorak. A man cutting grass looked up and his eyes focused sharply.
‘It seems that we have found a fox,’ I said with a light laugh.
‘It seems you have indeed,’ he said with a great guffaw.
At seven you are content to have a baby fox cradled in your arms. It is warm and you are full of love and life unrolls before you without complications. But I foresaw all kinds of difficulties. It had been out all night so it was probably an orphan. We had passed cartridge shells on our walk. We subsequently discovered that the Hunt had caught its mother. So the first problem was food.
A neighbour who bred dogs provided us with milk powder and cereal. We added fresh yolk of egg and my neighbour unhesitatingly cut one finger from her rubber washing-up gloves, pierced a hole in the tip and stretched the open end over a tablespoon. In this way we had a rough and ready feeding apparatus which, with several willing hands to help, worked quite well. Straw was fetched and, all unknowingly, my husband sacrificed a thick woollen pullover which was warm for foxes but of a rather hideous design for husbands. Feeding would be necessary at two-hourly intervals. Children, fox lovers one and all it seemed, materialised from all directions and formed fairly orderly queues down by our shed. Eventually we said no more visitors, my daughter went reluctantly to bed and my husband came home and found out about his pullover. Luckily he too turned out to have a soft spot for foxes. At eleven pm, with a torch held under my chin, I gave Foxy his last feed of the day and we all went to bed.
It was an awful night. The fox-cub, curled up in his pullover cocoon, didn’t utter a sound but for the rest of us it was a restless time of wondering. Was he warm enough? Should we go down and feed him again? Would he still be alive in the morning?
At five-thirty am Anna was out in dressing-gown and gum boots. ‘Mummy, it’s still breathing.’ What a relief.
At six-thirty my husband was mixing Foxy’s breakfast and the house began to echo with the rubbery rustlings of many wellington boots.
I am not renowned for my early rising but soon I too am peering sleepily into the shed. The air smells very foxy. The pullover will never be the same. But the tiny creature is alive and two misty grey eyes peer up at me from above the long, delicate snout.
Sometimes, when my husband leaves for work, I ask him to bring home little exotic extras from the market: mushrooms perhaps or a couple of green peppers. Today it is different.
‘Don’t forget the flea powder,’ I call from the porch.
The word soon get around in village communities.
‘There goes the girl with a fox,’ whispers a small boy and Anna walks tall in the village High Street.
I make telephone calls to various people who know about foxes and my daughter pulls off quite a good business deal – a bale of straw for half a crown. Granny sends a postal order – she is another unexpected fox lover – and we start thinking of a good name for him. It is a dog fox so we reluctantly reject ‘Foxglove’. I am not wildly enthusiastic about ‘Fluff’ which seems to be the children’s current favourite. Perhaps we shall just stick to Foxy for now.
Henry, our tabby hearthrug of a cat is prowling around today like a puma. There are people with chickens at the end of the road and a lady opposite who is afraid that someone will get bitten.
In the kitchen Anna is painstakingly mixing the rich milk formula and Foxy stands waiting outside on tiny, trembly legs. Perhaps it will all work out. I hope so. It is a wonderful thing to be seven years old and to have a baby fox to care for.