Last night I was still awake at 1am for various reasons. At exactly 1.00am, according to my ipod, a fox started screeching like a banshee at what sounded like a distance of 2 metres from my bedroom window. For the first ten minutes I assumed it was just getting some stuff off its chest, having sex, marking its territory type thing so I lay there and thought about werewolves and so on. After 15 mins I got up and saw that it was actually standing right in the middle of the road and was looking in my direction (more or less - not actual eye contact). I banged the window and shouted a bit and waved my arms. It moved back about 2 cm and carried on. By now there was similar activity all over the place with curtains twitching and lights going on in neighbouring buildings. At 1.30am I opened the window and threw three potatoes at it. Small potatoes, not baking potatoes. My intention wasn't to hit it, just get it to bugger off. I howled at it once too but it seemed to like that so I stopped and went back to bed. None of this seemed to have phased it at all. I kid you not - it carried on until 2.30am.
I eventually fell asleep about 4, cursing all foxes.
Imagine my horror... when I left for work this morning... and found a dead fox lying on the ground underneath my bedroom window. I haven't felt this guilty for a long time. I threw potatoes at a fox in mourning. This dead one looked smaller and weedier than the howler so it could have been its child or younger sibling. Even worse - what do you do when there's a dead fox on the pavement? This is london, baby. There aren't any badgers or hawks or vultures waiting to clear up, like you get in the countryside or america. It was weedier than the other one but it was still quite big - like an average dog. It turns out that Lewisham Council has teams of people waiting for your call to come and rescue Lewishites from these situations. That probably explains why our council tax is so high.
A friend has suggested it could be a good omen, but I can't help feeling I am in for some serious bad karma. I'm already starting a cold. But that could just be a result of hanging out of the window at 1.30am in my pjs, throwing potatoes. I really do feel awful about that poor fox.
6 comments:
Hi Lixie, oh I hate to hear this, there's so few wild things left in the world, it seems. We have foxes occasionally here in our neighborhood too, not so many as before though.
In Japan, middle-aged women (like me) are thought to be shape-shifters, and able to change into foxes.
I live in the sticks and I rarely see a fox or a badger although I know that they are around (as anyone keeping chickens lets me know when M Reynard is on the prowl). It must have ben a weird experience for you.
Poor things...
You may have helped the fox move on from the phase of deep mourning by reminding him that the dead are at peace but the living must carry on and dodge the potatoes that life throws at us.
Oh, Lixie, please don't beat yourself up. You were actually doing a kindness by trying to eprsuade the fox to move away from the road.
tagged you back
Lewishites? Is that really the correct terminology? I mean, I have nothing against the area myself, but then again, I don't live there.
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