A red fox and brown hounds

Many moons ago on a farm I heard the familiar sound of the local foxhunt. I was up in the yard and went to the field gate to see what was happening. The day’s sport had taken them along the river bank .They had either followed the scent of a fox or had picked one up but I could not tell which because they were milling around at the bottom of the gently sloping field. As I looked on the quarry was running for his, or her, life up the bare field towards me. Fox reached the open gateway and stopped. We exchanged looks. For a moment it seemed as if I was fated to be an unwilling ally of the hunt and the downfall of a creature I have no grievance against.

“Foxy” I said quietly “you need to be on your way”. As if understanding my intentions the fox trotted toward the concrete slurry tank. I expected him to make for the shadowy cover of the pig house but instead he deftly jumped up onto the pipe that ran across the top of the slurry pit. Like a diminutive, red, furry tightrope walker the fox carefully made his way along the pipe. With only a fleeting glance back at me he jumped off at the far end closest to the pig house and bounded away.

Just as the fox vanished the first two couples of hounds burst through the gate and bounded into the yard. Three of the tan and white hounds following the scent jumped up onto the pipe....jostled for a place, overbalanced and disappeared into the tank. There was a dull splot as they landed in the excrement. The unsavoury smell of the disturbed contents wafted like an invisible cloud across the concrete. Moments later the hounds which had taken an unplanned swim scrambled out of the tank. The remainder of the hunt then arrived to find three uniformly brown hounds circling around in the yard occasionally shaking congealed blobs of pig muck off themselves.