Strix
Life With Satan
0 F what, when his loved ones are from home, is the head of the household head? 'Inmates of house' is the dictionary's answer, and it seems a fair one. For the past fortnight the inmates of my house have been a Spanish cook, a Labrador dog and Satan (a fox); and all would have gone swimmingly but for Satan, who is actually—pace the lexicographers—as much of an outmate as an inmate.
I gave, in an article in these pages four months ago, some account of the circumstances in which Satan, together with his sister Sophie, was taken on the strength. They were tiny little kitten-sized animals in those days, both fitting easily into one pocket of my coat. When fed from the same dish they fought like tigers, bumping and boring with their hind- quarters while their teeth were busy masticating, and scurrying off with bits of food to hide them, ineffectively, in corners. Given separate saucers, they became less competitive, less anti-social; but one had got an idea of what life must be like in a family of fox-cubs to whom the vixen brings, at irregular and unpredictable intervals, one piece de resistance.
Satan would not, I think, have survived in his own family circle, had it still existed and had he been able to rejoin it. He had lost most of one foreleg, below the elbow, in a trap. and although the stump had more or less healed, he was not cut out for incessant brawling over carrion. He moved in early youth with a painful, exaggerated limp, the sort of gait which I suspect Mr. Murray Posh's friend, in The Diary of a Nobody, might have adopted when imitating Irving in Richard III. But he never repined, never refused a challenge from his able- bodied sister to the strenuous mock-fights which occupied much of their time. They were both, from the first, devoted to the Labrador, who treated them with the dutiful but rather disdainful benevolence shown, in Victorian fiction, by elderly guardians to unwished-for wards.
They seemed content with captivity; and when, growing larger, they burrowed out of the sort of guinea-pig corral in which they had been confined, they did what one had hoped they would do and used the house and garden as a base— though not, in the case of Sophie, for long.
* * * ' Satan, the cripple. spent most of the day curled up under a clump of trees within sight of the house, reporting back to- wards dusk for a meal, and generally sleeping, in considerable luxury, indoors. Sophie, being sound and therefore more self- sufficient, came back for supper and then, after flirting about in a quicksilvery way upon the darkening lawn, vanished to range widely through the woods. But, like all wild animals brought up by human beings, she was the vulnerable product of an unreal Welfare State, and when she forsook it she was doomed. Her Mum, however slatternly and rough, would have trained her to hunt, would have prevented her from yowling forlornly outside gamekeepers' cottages, and would never have allowed her to forget that dogs were her natural enemies.
All she had learnt from me about the outside world was that dogs, in the person of the Labrador, were the objects of hero- worship and the repositories of an absolute trust. And Sophie, who—even without Mum's guidance, even at her tender age— might have shown a clean pair of heels to the Quorn, was killed by a single stray dog, a fierce executioner in whom she had discerned only the partner for a romp.
Hardly had the post mortem on poor Sophie been concluded when Satan disappeared. The worst was feared. Then, after a two nights' absence, he was rescued from a tunnel-trap quite close to the house. A tunnel-trap is, as its name partly suggests, a long, low tunnel with a gin-trap in it, and is designed to catch stoats who, when working their way along a hedgerow, like to go under, into or through rather than over the top of things.
Satan was caught by the same foreleg of which he had already lost nearly half, but this time he was caught above the elbow. The severed bone stuck out close below the joint of his shoulder; underneath it hung the cumbrous, septic wreckage of what had once been a useful stump. He had broken all his milk-teeth on the gin trying to get free; but he seemed cheerful, undaunted and glad to be home.
I took him to the vet, who said that a major operation was involved and (since he was unsure about the correct anaes- thetics for foxes) arranged for an out-station of the Royal Veterinary College to deal with the case. Satan behaved admirably on the operating table, did not die under the anaesthetic, and, after an hour's wonderfully skilful work by the surgeon, was converted from a quadruped to a triped. He did not seem to notice the difference and indeed moved with more agility than he had before.
* * * I know nothing about his secret life—how far he goes when he lopes off into the wood behind the house; whether he is a successful predator on moles and such small deer. He comes back in the evening and sleeps under my bed at night. Some- times the Labrador unbends, and they chase each other madly round the lawn (Satan is amazingly quick and acrobatic on his three legs). I have never tried taking him for a properwalk, but over short distances he follows with what looks like un- questioning obedience; in fact, it is the Labrador he is following, not me.
The other day somebody brought a Norfolk terrier puppy to the house. Satan (who is now a biggish animal) bounded forward effusively to greet it. The puppy, pardonably dis- mayed by this apparition, turned tail and sidled away. Satan increased his speed, the puppy increased hers, and we beheld the unwonted spectacle of a fox pursuing a dog.
This is all very well as far as it goes, but it is no good pretending that having a fox about the house makes the house any easier to run. The elderly visitor, left in the drawing-room while I fetch the sherry, is found on my return to be in a state of agitation. 'Do you know,' he says, in the tones of one who fears that his reason may be tottering. 'just for a moment 1 could have sworn that a fox came into the room while you were gone. . .
Then there is the problem of the daily woman, a rather stern, imperious character. 'Mrs. Wiles,' the cook (a staunch alopecophil) ruefully informed me the other day, 'tiene mucho miedo del zorro.' I shall not be thanked, I know, if Mrs. Wiles's fear of Satan causes her to leave our service; and mean- while, of course, all breakages are attributed, if not to the fox himself, then to the nasty turn he gave her.
Aloof, handsome, insolent and sly, leading a double life between the beechwoods and the drawing-room sofa, Satan is clearly storing up trouble for himself; but when you con- sider the hazards he has survived so far—two gin-traps, the loss of one leg and all his teeth—it is difficult not to conclude that lie bears a charmed life : or at least that he has the luck of the devil.
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