(no subject)

[londonbard]

It happened as midnight turned...

I suffer from insomnia and badly broken sleep but I'd been sleeping at night for some weeks. Even the clocks going forward didn't change the new 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. routine, until something woke me just before midnight on Thursday night.

I tried but I could not get back to sleep.

Eventually I got up, turned on the TV and had a snack. After a while I became aware of a sound. Some of the neighbours have very ... intrusive sex-lives, but this wasn't cats; it sounded a bit like foxes, but it wasn't the mating screams. It sounded as though they wanted to audition for a Dracula film and were rehearsing to sound as creepy as possible.

By then I'd turned the TV off and was trying to work out what was going on. I'd started to think in terms of a trapped creature, in pain somewhere nearby, but ... somehow I hesitated to go out and investigate. I'm not usually a timid woman, but there was an uneasy feeling to the night.

I was going to write that I'd never heard anything like it, but that's not quite correct. I'd heard things that sounded a bit like that. A hound, or a couple in full cry? Not ... quite, but I was vaguely remembering that some kind of bird is supposed to sound like hounds in the far distance.

Then a couple more creatures joined in or the pack came nearer. For a few moments it actually sounded like wolves howling, but on a very poor recording played through very bad equipment on a very old film.

"Listen (crackle) to the child(scrape)ren of the night. (pop, crackle) What beaut(crackle) music they (fizz-sptift) make."

(I tend to use humour as defense but something about that sound made me reluctant to go outside without something with a lot more stopping power.)

So I went back to my bedroom and looked out of the window, not really expecting to see anything.

There was a dead fox directly outside my window. It was lying on its side with its back curved and its legs stretched stiffly out; not curled up, but as though it had been dead for long enough for rigor mortis to be partially established. The brush was toward me, but it seemed likely to be the big dog-fox who has lived around here for years.

The awful, painful, sob-yipping threnody was all around, very close.
.................................
(Despite the surreal horror of it all my first reaction was, "Oh, sh..! [I know the local beasts slightly. They've had cubs in the disused shed three doors away, once or twice. The vixen is average and very wary; the male is at least three times the size of the average fox. I don't feed them but my eye trouble can make sunlight painful and I sleep badly, so I'm often around at dusk and after dark. The male and I do sometimes go the same way at the same time, but while keeping an escape distance of about 60 feet.]

I was genuinely shocked and sorry - but not least because, if the corpse had been on the public pavement it would have been the local authority's problem. In here it was the problem of the tenant of the nearest property, and that's me. I couldn't quite work out how to get the body of a very big, heavy fox out of the railed area, preferably without touching it - and then there were the mourners to worry about.
...................................

I tapped sharply on the window-pane, hoping to at least stop the dirge. It didn't.

The "corpse" moved. It didn't spring to its feet; it sat up, looked me straight in the eyes from a distance of about 8 feet and started trying to bark at me!

It was surreal. It appeared that the ex-corpse might be making part of the babbling-cry, but he was also sort-of-barking at me - while sitting up, alert, with ears forward except when he yapped and the ears twitched back.

As far as I know, Foxes. do. not. do. that. Ever! My first thought was to get the camera. My second was that I wouldn't be able to get a photo without opening the window. (The window is quite low; I could have taken a picture at very close range. No bloody way was I going to open that window!)

I continued to look the brute in the eyes while I hit the grid over the window hard enough to make it reverberate. That made the beast stand and it turned, squeezed through the railings and loped away around the street corner (with some difficulty; its a really big animal.)

As it turned the corner a second fox ran from directly under my window. It looked almost the same size but didn't have a problem going through the railings and following the first. Silence fell, outside.

I then spent some time talking to the RSPCA and then to the local emergency vet.

(I know what I'd think if it'd happened in Germany. We don't have rabies in England [but did clarify that its eyes were clear, it was focusing, it was not grossly badly coordinated and didn't seem to be salivating. It was sturdy; no sign of mange but the coat was somehow ... wrong. It was also as weird as a three-legged fish! Ahem. I mean its behaviour was completely unnatural.)

Distemper is also a central nervous system infection and it can make a canid act in a way that may be comparable. It isn't communicable to humans but foxes and dogs can apparently infect each other. Anyway, whether that fox was the local male (in which case it's reversed its character and is acting crazy) or an intruder, it isn't afraid of humans, it's aggressive and there are three infants within 100 feet of its last known lair.
..............................

The whole thing was so peculiar that I found myself wondering if I'd dreamed it, after I'd finally slept (at about 5 a.m.) and then woken at about noon. When I checked the phone the record confirmed the calls.

Normally I wander about out there at night as happily as a vampire, but it's 5a.m. and I must admit that I'm hesitating about taking out the trash. Anyway, that's my next job before I make another attempt at sleeping.