A bit of a lighter note this week; yes, it’s time for some more thatched animals. This offering

appears to be a female fox and her cub chasing a hare along the ridge of this cottage.

Trouble is, it is quite some time since I took this photo so I can’t now remember which

Village it was in?

As we all know female foxes are known as Vixens, whilst Male foxes are known as dogs, Tods or Reynards. Fox young are known as cubs or Kits. There are also a number of collective nouns for foxes, these are either a Skulk, Leash or Earth.

My Favourite fox poem which I remember from school, is the Thought Fox by Ted Hughes:

The Thought-Fox

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.