The Murder Mystery

The fox’s nature is to avoid being seen. So there isn’t any telling when he’s seeing you.

This one and I have met at a distance. Once, while out walking, I saw it crossing the headland and start down a path perpendicular to mine. The fox didn’t contemplate the chicken yard, which I thought strange.

The wind was southwest, and I waited for the moment he’d catch my scent. And stopped. I watched through binoculars as the animal assessed the threat I posed. And, after what seemed a very deliberative pause, like he’d done a full background check, the fox carried on — though, every now and again, glancing back at the threat I posed, making sure I hadn’t moved.

“The chickens are on their own,” I say.

I’m not protecting them this time, because, to some degree, chickens are easy. You just need to shut them in, close the gate to their yards and be sure the fox can’t get over, under or through the fence.

But the guinea hens are problematic. They fly over to go on long jaunts through our increasingly fenced and abstract neighborhood. At times, we’ve had as many as 60, but now our flock is just 11. They are gregarious and not afraid to die, warrior-like watchdogs both on and off our property.

But they are birds. Without a caretaker following up on their screams, they are no match for the fox.

Days later, I find one dead. Like a murder mystery, the details unfold: feathers strewn but not extensive. The bird is cold and stiffening. The sun is setting, and the victim has been in this condition for at least an hour. So the perpetrator wasn’t hungry?

Nor is the victim visibly maimed. Turning the bird over, I find a fatal but singular puncture wound near the base of its neck. Was it a hawk that could not carry the kill?

I could bury the bird, but that strikes me as wasteful, so I leave it. I make a lap through the chicken yard and go to the house to tell my mother what I think has happened.

As I’m listing the evidence, I can see directly out the kitchen window and across the farmyard, where it egresses to rye field. It is here and now that I see the pretty fox. He trots with his head held high; he’s in the open and in plain sight. In his mouth is a polka-dotted bird.

I count the moments that have passed since my discovery of the guinea hen and realize, based on his current location and speed, that the fox was proximal then as I knelt, inspecting the scene. Foxlike.

“So now it is 10,” I say.