Fantastic Mr Fox

On a dreary February day, John Lewis-Stempel comes face-to-face with a brace of Vulpes vulpes crucigera among the emerging snowdrops in the dingle below his Herefordshire farmhouse

- John Lewis-Stempel

THERE’S a bit of a dingle below the house. Nobody goes there much. The floor is black mire, and the trees when living hold a sullen silence, and when fallen down dead are tangled wrecks.

In the dingle, all the world’s mists are manufactured. Strange creatures inhabit the place. I saw a wryneck there once, clasping a limb of oak like a grey lizard (or a canker). On another occasion, I was surprised by an albino grass snake. In the dingle, I’ve watched a weasel ‘waltz’—my inner Romantic attributed the eurhythmy to joie de vivre; my inner scientist suggested the effects of the nematode parasite Skrjabingylus nasicola in the weasel’s brain.

The oddest resident, however, of the dingle, is the fox. Vulpes vulpes crucigera is a dog, but a cat-like one. Those amber eyes have vertical slit pupils, like a cat’s, and, in hunting, the fox likes to pounce, like a cat. Those cattily erect ears can hear a watch ticking at 60ft. There are experts who think that the fox, like birds, is able to use the Earth’s magnetic field for navigation.

As I say, Mr Tod is an odd creature. The dingle below the house spews foxes as it spews mist. Sometimes, the two come out together, as they did today.

I was in the dingle this morning to check the floral calendar. Snowdrops merely underscore winter’s cold. The sure sign of spring is the blossoming of marsh marigold or kingcup, the brilliant yellow blooms of which erupt like suns from the earth. Marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) transform the dingle into shangri-la, just as they turn winter, that other sort of dingle, into spring.