A synchronicity of foxes
When is a coincidence a 'sign'?
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How many dead foxes have you seen? Not roadkill from a distance, I mean up close and personal, so close you can smell it. I truly want to know, so please leave your answers in the comments below.
In March this year I came across a dead fox by the side of the path on one of my normal dog walks. I am literally morbidly fascinated by the morbid and made sure to check on its progress in the coming days. Over the next two weeks its fur peeled away and lay like a discarded blanket on the ivy and dirt. It grimaced, teeth bared, as its blackened skin melted into its rib cage. The scent changed, perceptibly losing the animal and taking on the sickly sweet finality of death.
To be honest, I was surprised that fellow dog walkers allowed it to remain in such a visible place for so long. We are oddly disconnected with death. I remember my fellow dog walkers turning masked faces aside and spurning greetings when they were scared of death in 2020. I wondered if this fox might be an insulting reminder to the more squeamish and death-denying among us that in the natural world death goes on. It has never stopped. There are no 24-hour funeral parlours, tidying up of the corpse or cremations for the creatures of the wood. They drop dead where they stand or lie and are feasted upon crows and maggots, in full view of the life they have left behind.
In fact, the fox must have been moved on by someone. After a couple of weeks, the body and every last tuft of fur were collected. The air on that section of the path was once again fresh.
At that time I moved home and away from that long-treasured dog walk. On the second day in our new home, I caught a familiar scent in the garden. (You don’t forget the scent of two-week-old decomposing fox carcass.)