The town fox and the country fox

"You must visit me in my country manor, dear boy," said Darcy, between mouthfuls of lamb kebab topped with dribbles of sweet n sour sauce. Smythe tore into a cardboard carton exuding the aroma of last week's KFC.

"Why would I want to leave this bounty?" said Smythe, indicating the spilled contents of a trash can from which he had selected the remains of a barbeque rib. He took no notice as Darcy jumped at the roar of a passing motorcycle, hiding momentarily under the engine-space of an adjacent Audi.

"A little rural peace and quiet would do you no harm," said Darcy, emerging from behind the kerbstone, his muzzle covered with the remnants of some sticky sauce, peppered with road dirt.

"We'll see," said Smythe, having moved on to lap up a morsel of pepperoni and a fragment of pizza crust. They continued their nocturnal feast until confronted by a ferocious barking dog, straining at its leash and dragging a pet behind it. The two foxes slunk off into a nearby builders' yard.

"Dogs are the devil," said Smythe as they both hid behind a pile of truck tires.

"Well, come with me then my dear chap, to my arcadian bliss, where you will see precious few of those fearsome fellows."

Smythe was eventually persuaded to follow his friend Darcy to the latter's country domain. They spent two days and nights following the iron roadway, picking at morsels along the way. Smythe was not impressed with the meagre fare provided by the hedgerows and rail embankments, but was spurred on by Darcy's stories of the country banquets that awaited them.

Arriving the next morning, they took a brief breakfast from a heap of discarded farmyard vegetables, before bedding down for the day. Darcy showed Smythe a hidden entrance to a cosy lair beneath a huge haybarn. Not before they had snapped up a wayward duck that had strayed too far from its fishpond. Darcy showed Smythe how to pluck the feathers before tearing open the carcass to share with his urban paw-pal. They spread the feathers to cushion their overday beds.

The following night they arose early with poultry on their minds, as Darcy had been telling stories of a huge hen house, barely protected by a thin wire fence. After an hour or two of digging, they managed to gain access to the wooden structure but, try as they might, they could not claw or chew their way through the wooden walls of the hen house.

"Never mind Smythe, old chap. There are plenty of pickings to be had elsewhere."

Smythe was unimpressed and, being taken on what he considered a wild goose chase, found no meat for their meal, having to make do with hedgerow fruits and the odd shrivelled chestnut left behind by the squirrels. Come morning, they were tired and fairly famished.

"Where is all this fine food you promised me," grumbled Smythe.

"Be patient, dear fellow," said Darcy, himself wondering where to go next to find the nourishment they both needed. That's when he thought of the wheat field nearby. "Here we are, dear chap," said Darcy as they reached the outer hedge of a series of fields of wheat, ripe and ready for the harvest that very day.

"But what is it?" asked Smythe, surveying the vast expanse of golden field before him.

"This is a wheat field, my dearest friend," said Darcy, condescending to explain. "This is where we find our breakfast."

Smythe, nibbling a few ears of wheat, was still not convinced.

"Grass? nothing but grass. How is a respectable fox supposed to sustain himself on such bland and unpalatable stuff? Where is the spice, where is the savour?"

"Patience, dear fellow. It is not the wheat we seek, but the succulent little field mice, hundreds of 'em, that reside herein."

Suddenly, there was a loud and piercing peal of a trumpet call, rising above the hedgerows, shocking them both into silence. Darcy recognised the sound at once as that of the hunting horn. He froze on the instant, momentarily in abject fear, before composing himself.

"What, by the holy Mother Vixen, is that?" exclaimed Smythe. Immediately following the hunting horn, came a wall of sound produced by the barking of dozens of hounds. "Dogs?" he asked, feeling his fur stand erect from every inch of his body.

"Dogs?" said Darcy, thinking quickly. "Don't worry about them. They are caged and tethered and can do us no harm. In this rural realm, dogs are the slaves of the pets, and not the other way around, as you are used to in your sophisticated city."

Was there or was there not just the merest hint of sarcasm in this observation.

"Really?" said Smythe.

"Oh yes, and that sound you hear is the call to breakfast."

"Call to breakfast?"

"Oh yes, call to breakfast. The clarion call to break our fast from the cornucopia, the table of the gods."

"But what do you mean?"

"Here, in the countryside, foxes are revered as the god-like creatures we truly are. From time to time, the people of the countryside will offer us sacrifice. They will lay before us great heaps of young lamb, calf, hen, duck, and piglet for our delectation. We need only grace their table with our presence and dip our snouts into the feast. They alert us to their offering with that high-pitched, tinny sound we know as the trumpet call. They leave the low-born canine curs in their cages to yap and howl and bark, as they watch us gorge our fill. They are lucky if they are allowed to eat our leftovers. It is a ritual of this rural idyll."

"Oh, really?" said Smythe, trying to grasp the implications of this speech. Perhaps Darcy was right. Perhaps in this rural kingdom foxes received the adoration they truly deserved. Perhaps, in the countryside, foxes were not the underdogs they were in the city, scavenging for scraps in the wee hours. Perhaps in this rural domain foxes received the proper recognition.

"Well then," he continued. "Where do we go to join this feast?"

"Why, my dear friend," said Darcy, rubbing his forepaws together. "You simply follow the trumpet call. Follow the sound of the horns, and you will be directed to the feast. Run along, and I will follow you shortly."

With this, jowls slavering, Smythe trotted away in the direction of the sounding horns and the barking of the excited Bassett hounds.

Darcy slunk off to his haybarn hidey hole, congratulating himself on his perspicacity.

Later that morning Darcy, poking his snout out from the shelter of his foxhole, observed the whole procession. Hounds, horses, riders in red, led by the terrified town fox, leaping and galloping and running across the fields in the distance. At length, his friend the town fox, exhausted, made a final dash for a stream but to no avail. In an instant, the hounds were upon him.

Darcy grimaced as he heard the final panicked scream of the trapped fox, his friend Smythe, as the cruel fangs of the hounds ripped him to tattered ruin.

"Ah well!" Darcy sighed, philosophically. "It could have been worse. It could have been ME."

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