The curious incident of the fox in the day time

I thought it was going to be a quiet day. That’s how all tragedies start isn’t it? Of course not. But this one did. These things wait for us on the most unassuming of days, interrupting the most trivial of plans. 

I should say from the off: this wasn’t my tragedy. And if I’ve led you to believe that it’s tragic in the truest sense of the word - tragic like Hamnet, the book I’ve put down to write this - it isn’t. This tragedy belonged to someone else - to something else, in fact. For the subject of this story, it was the ultimate tragedy. I was merely a witness - unwittingly involved, drawn into a situation I could never have foreseen nor wished for. 

It was two months ago. December, the first day of the Christmas holidays. For some reason, at the time the event passed by with perhaps less air time than it deserved. Maybe because it was Christmas or Lockdown or both. It was unusual - more than unusual. One of those occurrences that isn’t quite like being struck by lightning or winning the Euromillions but possibly in the same realm: you can’t imagine it happens to many people. I only recall it now because my father mentioned seeing a fox lying in his garden the other day: bold as brass, red as rust, basking in the nearly-Spring sunshine.

So here we are: Saturday. The first of 17 long, delicious days. My husband is at work. The children wake up late, we stay in pyjamas, we’re Saturdaying. They watch TV while I make breakfast. I call them, they bound in - the only natural response to pancakes and maple syrup. We eat. We go upstairs and play a board game. We mill, unhurried. We read a few books. We hum. We pick things up and put them down again, in that ponderous way you do when the hours stretch eternal. We move like cats: languid, meandering, quietly content. Eventually we get changed. I ask them if they want to go to the skate park - a lockdown favourite. They say yes. I say maybe, when we come back, we could bake something. We’re about to leave when I check my phone. There’s a message from my neighbour. I see the picture before I play the voice message. 

It’s a fox, lying down on grass, legs pushed away from itself. I recognise that lawn, that watering can, that fence. Of course it’s our garden - why else would she send me a picture of a random fox? I play the message. They spied it from upstairs, they knocked on the window to rouse it, they couldn’t. We rush to the back door. There it is, looking exactly like its picture: life imitating WhatsApp. It’s midday, broad daylight. There’s a fox in the middle of our garden, stretched out without a care in the world, eyes shut tight, all instincts of self-protection seemingly evaporated. 

A couple of months prior to this, my daughter informed me that foxes are crepuscular. I loved this new word. I couldn’t stop saying it: crepuscular crepuscular crepuscular. She was writing a poem about a fox. We learned that foxes have been forced into being nocturnal because of humans, but naturally they are crepuscular: they like to come out in the thin light of dawn and again later, in that time before the day meets its end. We knock on the glass. I open the door a crack and shout. Nothing. The truth is loud and resounding: the fox is dead. I know this and yet I tell myself that perhaps he (or she or they) is just sleeping. He’s tired from looking for food, having a little rest on his way home. The children want to go out and look at it. I say no - what if he’s carrying some disease, some pestilence? He must have died of something. We just stand there, staring. It suddenly dawns on me. This isn’t just a dead fox, it’s our dead fox. The Godfather-esque tone of this isn’t lost on me. It feels ominous. A bit of a vibe killer, at least. I don’t want a dead fox in my garden. It’s icky. Why couldn’t it have just died a few metres away, in someone else’s garden? The garden of someone better equipped to deal with this type of shit. What are we supposed to do with it? How do we get rid of it? I say we but it’s just I. 

I have no precedence for this. And I’m not the most get-rid-of-a-dead-animal type, to put it mildly. If there’s someone you don’t want in the trenches with you, it’s me. Obviously I will be going nowhere near the dead fox. We have no side return, no way of reaching the garden without going through the house. Whoever, however, whenever - the dead fox must come through here. We could just go to the skate park like we planned but it seems obscene to do that now, with the fox being dead and all. What if it’s been dead for longer than we think? What if it’s decomposing as we speak?

I call my husband; he’ll know what to do, he always knows what to do. He doesn’t disappoint. He’s calm, logical as ever - exactly the person you’d want with you in the trenches. He says I need to call the council and they’ll come and take it away. He finds the number and bids me farewell. I can do this. I’m going to sort this out. I mean, not literally of course. I’m going to call someone else to sort this out. Inevitably I get through to someone who says I need to speak to another department. He puts me through, I wait on hold for 14 minutes, listening to the elevator version of ‘Shot Through the Heart’ on repeat. I sing along to it. The children watch TV. When the next person picks up the phone, he says the same thing. I’m irritated but I pretend to not be a cow. After half an hour ping-ponging around the council’s switchboard, I’m finally put through to the Dead Fox in Your Garden Department. She’s nice, the woman. Great, I think. This is all going to be fine. But lo, what words are these falling from her lips? She’s the bearer of bad news, terrible news, the worst news.

They can’t come through the house to get the dead fox. Nothing to do with Covid, as it turns out. The council were sued a few years ago and have since changed their policy on removing dead animals from gardens. She tells me the story. They were carrying a dead fox through someone’s house and the decomposing body disintegrated - ‘burst’, she says. It destroyed their carpet, so they sued - and won. In my head the carpet was thick and soft - cream coloured. It’s a vivid image: a dead fox ‘bursting’ onto your carpet. A grisly balloon spilling out maggots and gunge, infesting your home with the stench of death. 

But still, what a bunch of litigious bastards - ruining it for everyone. 

She says they’ll come and pick up the dead fox, no bother. I just have to get it to the front garden. Just. I mean, she might as well be saying I need to turn water into wine. ‘I can’t do that’, I say. She says once she’s put it on the system, they’ll be there in two hours to pick it up - like some kind of plague-ish click and collect. If it’s not in the front garden by that time, we’ll have to wait until Monday for them to come back. I can’t have the dead fox rotting in my garden for two days! Don’t you remember the story about the bursting?

She can hear my panic. Her tone changes now. It’s pastoral, edifying. ‘Look’, she says, ‘it’s going to be alright. Just get a couple of bin bags and a shovel.’ I burst out laughing. I’ve gone into full hysteria now. Just the thought of getting these things is too much, absurd. 

‘Oh God!’, I screech, ‘I know you don’t know me but if you did, you’d know there’s no way I can do this’. 

We’re both laughing now. I stand at the door, staring at the fox, still dead. 

‘Could you just scoop it up and put it in a bin bag?’

I look at the fox, imagining its weight. A weight beyond the deepest sleep. A weight that sinks, that wills itself into the earth. The thought of feeling that weight, the weight of death. It’s unimaginable, the stuff of horror, of never sleeping again. I squeal.

‘Oh God’, she says ‘I wish I could help you, love’

‘I wish you could too’, I say. We both laugh again.

‘What a nightmare. Are you going to be alright?, she says.

‘Yeah, I’ll sort something out’.

‘Well they’ll be there in two hours’. 

She wishes me well, I thank her, I hang up. And now the clock is ticking. 

I ring my husband again. He answers, thank fuck. He wastes no time trying to cajole me into dealing with the dead fox; he knows I’m not an option. He has an idea. My sister-in-law (his sister) and brother-in-law are Christmas shopping a couple of miles away. If I call them, he’s sure my brother-in-law won’t mind coming over and carrying the fox out. ‘He’ll probably quite enjoy it, in a way’, he says. This seems a bridge too far. But they do live in the country, so maybe for him it won’t be that big a deal. Maybe it’s the equivalent of picking up a spider?

I send a voice message, picturing them listening to it as they peruse the pretty things in John Lewis. Never in their wildest imaginings could they predict what they’re about to hear. ‘You know how you’re having a rare, child-free day shopping for gifts, listening to the tinkle of festive songs as you browse, maybe stopping for a coffee and a mince pie? Well, could you please stop doing that and come and pick up a dead fox instead?’ She replies a few minutes later, my sister-in-law, saying they’re on their way. They arrive. As expected, my brother-in-law is entirely unphased at the prospect of moving this dead body. He asks if we have any tarpaulin. We do. I give it to him and out he goes, as if he’s just popping out to pick up a pint of milk. No biggie. My sister-in-law and I watch him from the firmly closed back door. 

He walks over to the fox, contemplates it for a moment. He folds the tarpaulin, once, twice, and places it on the ground next to the animal. Then he puts his hands on the foxes legs - each hand gripping two spindly ankles together - and picks him up. We let out yelps from behind the glass. He picks it up like it’s nothing - like it’s a chicken, not a fox. But we see it; we see the weight, we see the stiffness, the turgidity. We see the 2D quality of something which should be animated. A gruesomely heavy cardboard cutout. He places it onto the tarpaulin and folds the rest of the sheet over it. Then he picks it up under his arm and walks towards us. We shrink back as he passes, hands on chests, breaths held. The fox is completely covered. Except for the tail. It protrudes from the tarpaulin, a grim reminder of what lurks inside. I’m shocked at how bushy it is. It looks like a feather duster. Within seconds it’s gone from sight, placed by our front wall, awaiting collection. 

In total it takes my brother-in-law less than three minutes to move the fox. By the time my husband comes home four hours later, the fox is gone. I expected a knock at the door, a voice saying ‘We’ve come to take your dead fox’, but no. Nothing. It was a silent taking, no exchange required. They’ve left the tarpaulin. They must have rolled him out. I imagine the weight of that roll - or was it a throw? I see the landing, the dull sound of fur and bones meeting a heap of the urban deceased. He’d looked so at rest lying there in our garden, as if he might awake with a yawn and a stretch. His inability to do so made him a nuisance, an interruption, a morbid problem to solve. 

It was supposed to be a quiet day, the first of many. We had low-key plans, all thwarted by his dying in our garden. I spent half the day dealing with his removal, the other half wondering when he’d be collected. Now what? 

I imagine a den, somewhere. The inhabitants know nothing of hours or minutes but they know of fathers, mothers, siblings. Not in our way, perhaps, but of a sort. They know of belonging, of sharing a home. They know of warmth, of safety, of sleeping and waking. They know of hunger, of instinct, of survival. They know when to leave and when to return. They know, somehow, that it’s been too long.