You don’t like me – even my beautiful fur, which is so warm, is out of fashion! Some of you people don’t like me because I kill animals, wild animals like rabbits, but also your animals. As many as possible. I can always hide them for later. You never know. This evening, I went hunting at dusk. It’s a good time because I can see better than the animals I’m hunting! And it’s when all the rabbits come out to graze. I know exactly where they live: sometimes I listen to them thumping about in their warrens underground. Then all I have to do is wait… till they come up! Carnivores kill, that’s how it is, and the greater the panic, the more we need to kill! We almost never attack you, though. Don’t know why, we just don’t. Maybe it’s because we often hunt at dusk or later, and your babies and toddlers go to bed. Pity. They’d make a lovely meal! Still, there it is. All the same, our hearing is very good, and we see so well at night, – that’s useful if you’re fast and sneaky clever like me! And we are clever: can you use the earth’s magnetic field to judge distance and direction? I don’t think so. And at night it’s quiet, the way I like it. We’re not pack animals: so what I kill is mine. Mine! But I do hunt by day as well, I can kill any time!
You think I am bad because I kill, but I am not bad, it’s just how I am. Lambs, rats, chickens, rabbits as I’ve said, oh yummee!
Sometimes I meet another fox to groom or play together. We scream to attract a mate or mark our territory. It’s true we foxes live with our cubs when we have them, just once a year in the springtime. It’s a lot of work, but we share it, the Mum and Dad. Sometimes even the brothers and sisters help, and bring food… Our little cubs can’t walk or see, or keep the right temperature when they are born, so we have to help them, that’s just the way it is. Or there wouldn’t be any foxes… Well, you help your babies, don’t you? By day, I do need a rest, under a bush or low down in a tree. Sometimes in the sun, sometimes not. It’s a good life…
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Charlotte's Wonderful Stories 