■238 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



snapping, twinkling eyes in the world. He lived in 

 a dog-house by the barn, on a long chain, and went 

 into canine spasms of welcome when I approached, 

 leaping at once to my shoulder, where he would sit 

 and chew off the rim of my straw hat like a puppy. 

 Once he got hold of my ear by ^mistake, and I 

 learned that foxes have teeth. He would go around 

 with me on a leash, nearly pulling me off my feet, and 

 showing no fear whatever of human beings. But 

 as he grew larger he developed a too active dislike 

 to other people, though never to me (nor did he, as 

 I recall, become inactive and broodingly morose, as 

 so many captured foxes do) . At last it was decreed 

 that he must be shot, however. My tears and 

 pleading won for him a mitigation of this sentence 

 to banishment to the woods, and one late August 

 day his collar and chain were removed. He made a 

 couple of glad bounds, trotted leisurely off across 

 the fields, and was never seen by me again. 



But by no means all captured foxes will thus take 

 to the woods. A friend of mine brought up a puppy 

 once which he used to release every day. The fox 

 would trot off to the wilds and the dog would go 

 baying after it. Invariably the fox, after leading 

 the dog a chase for a while, would come panting 

 back to his kennel, lie down, and go peacefully to 

 sleep. He knew the dog wouldn't molest him there. 



The approved method of capturing fox puppies is 

 to dig them out. It is not much practised here- 

 abouts, but farther north, where fox-farms abound, 

 even the lumbermen are such hunters. The efforts 

 of the mother fox to save her little ones are some- 

 times pathetic. A year or two ago, in the woods of 



