A friend posted in December 2017: "This morning as I drank my coffee, I saw one of our resident foxes run across the back yard past the bird bath and feeder, and streaks of red cardinal flew in every direction. Thinking about it has made me happy all day."
This image delights me. I love seeing cardinals (which always seem too rare) and foxes (which seem even rarer). But I started to wonder - why do I love foxes? It may be, in part, a literary legacy, mediated through British writers, come down to me through the ages via "Thought-Fox" and this charming passage from The Lord of the Rings (FR I.3 at 72):
A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed.
'Hobbits!' he thought. 'Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There's something mighty queer behind this.' He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.”
And I've posted about Winslow Homer's 1893 painting "Fox Hunt" before, questioning whether the fox is actually shown experiencing desperation. As I noted:
he looks alert, as if captured in mid-run rather than in his last moments. The left foreleg is reaching forward for the next step, his head is turned to a small break which would allow him to run down to the sea in case that would be helpful (probably not, but worth considering). I see no sign in the body language that the fox has reached a point of desperation, that the fox believes he is trapped or cornered. Nor do I see signs that he is physically exhausted quite yet, that the snow has worn him down; he looks sleek, but is he necessarily famished in this painting?
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