The Fox and its Mystical Allure
I've encountered foxes more and more lately. It's special everytime.
A short walk from my home are wooded grasslands which sit side by side various housing developments. I may encounter fellow humans walking a dog there, which makes me instantly jealous that they travel with a companion and I do not.
Often I see outside cats lingering around, traversing the land between nature and urban, and sometimes they seem to invite me into their lives. Other times they sit still and stare as if they’re judging me for encroaching on their territory.
With surprising regularity I meet foxes also. Specifically two. I frequently see the same two together - I believe them to be the same two at least. Sometimes I see them individually. But I never see more than two at a time.
I do not live in a city such as London, where the fox population borders on 10,000. That number being a natural reaction to our urban expansion devastating their habitat over time. Foxes have adapted, they’re survivors. They make use of our wasted food and find shelter in our structures and buildings. But the dangers to a fox, from road traffic to human cruelty, exist no matter which city or town they live in. For all I know, those two foxes are the only two around here.
A part of me hopes they’re the same two foxes I met some time ago on a night that changed my relationship with the animal. I have no real way of knowing if that is true. And given that being an urban fox is dangerous business, it may not be likely. But I like to believe it regardless.
That first meaningful encounter happened in the dead of night a few years ago. It started, as all good stories do, with alcohol, and a rather excessive amount of it.
After my friends and I had reached a suitable level of drunkenness, and no doubt made unsuitable fools of ourselves at the pub, we decided to head home and get a head start on our hangovers. I walked with one friend until we reached a fork in the road, my friend taking the road to the right, and myself taking the road to the left.
My eyesight was fogged from the alcohol, which made my phone look like a television that had lost signal. The static and white noise was too much for my squinted eyes. And so I drifted aimlessly through the night, alone.
That was until two small silhouettes sprung out from behind me, taking me completely by surprise. As intoxicated as I may have been, this was no cat, and certainly no dog.
I had been ambushed by two foxes. One ran past me without care and leapt into a hedge on the other side of the road. The second stopped metres away from me, planting itself on the patch of grass to my right. Suddenly my drunken, blurry vision was focused. The fuzzy world around me crystallised and only two things existed - the fox and I. My eyes were locked with the fox’s. And its eyes were locked with mine.
It did not look at me the way a dog might, with an excitable glee and the prospect of a belly rub. Nor did it stare at me like a cat, passing judgement on my existence. It stared at me the way one stares at their own reflection. That moment where despite looking at ourselves in the mirror everyday before leaving the house, we stare into our own eyes as if we’ve never done so before. We stare as if they’re not our eyes - almost like the reflection and the one in front of it are two different beings. We fall deeply and abidingly, sometimes uncomfortably, into our own pupils.
This is the way I looked at the fox. I stood still, making no effort to reach out and touch its beautiful fur. Nor did I say a word. I didn’t have to. It became clear as our gazes entwined that we spoke to each other optically. We shared a rudimentary language in which we could describe ourselves to each other. “I may be man and you may be fox, but we both have a body and the rain makes my skin just as wet as it makes your fur.”
It became clear to me that, despite how drunk I was, I had the ability to connect with this fox and it with me. I can’t remember how long we looked at each other for, it felt everlasting. But at some point it severed the connection, and scurried back into the night.
It’s an anecdote I’ve shared with people numerous times, usually in a half-joking manner. I know how hyperbolic it sounds to some people for me to harp on about this ethereal bond I once shared with a fox. But its a moment I think about often, and one I’m forever hoping to recreate.
There are few, perhaps no animal that has been in more tales than the fox has. More often than not, they’re painted as a cunning trickster, such as the literary character of Reynard The Fox in European folklore, a sly yet sympathetic hero who uses his cunning as a necessary tool for survival. Christian and medieval tales have even regarded the fox as demonic. The devil himself appeared as a fox to Saint Dunstan as he prayed.
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean folklore all share the image of foxes as powerful, shapeshifting spirits with a highly mischievous nature. Vixens which often take on the form of female humans to seduce men. These spirits are called ‘huli jing’ in China, ‘kitsune’ in Japan, and ‘kumiho’ in Korea. The tales of the kitsune tricksters range from roguish pranks on boastful samurai and merchants, to cruel abusive tricks on poor farmers and tradesmen.
That is the mystical appeal of encountering a fox, its intentions will be forever hidden. Will the fox play the trickster? Will it lure me into its world only to deceive me and leave me with a bite mark?
I want so badly to avoid it biting me. When one leaps out of the bush I wish it would curl its body around my legs, imploring me to stroke its fur. I want the fox to accept me instead of recoiling from me. I want to befriend it and care for it. I have even began to bring food with me when I leave the house in case a fox I meet is feeling particularly peckish. To feed one, to touch one, would be to break the barrier between illusion and reality.
Yet as much as I want to cross from my actuality into the fictional world of the fox. The other half of me knows to do so would ruin their allure. The mystical abnormality that a fox exudes.
Part of me hopes that if I ever reach my hand out to a fox, it rejects me. That it treats me how so much of humanity has treated it, it marks me and leaves me bleeding. And as I look at the blood seeping from the indentations on my hand, I would be grateful. I would feel the pain from the bite, but I think I would feel joy too. The joy of knowing how it feels to be seen and branded by one. A watermark from nature.
The fox would remain a fox. For a fox to accept me into its world would blur our realities. And so much of our reality has already assimilated their life. They’ve had to adapt to live in our cities and towns as man has changed their world into a concrete jungle. They take refuge in any place where they can safely raise their young. They’ve been forced to become scavengers.
I wish so much to help them, care for them. But to do so would be to embrace the human desire to hold all of Earth’s creatures and control them, dominate them. And to do that to the fox would destroy the very essence of what makes them so alluring to me.