The fox that eats our rubbish is not as confounded by the new locking bin as we are. Between four members of our household there is still no settled position on what constitutes “locked”. The fox, at least, seems to understand the principle behind the mechanism.
While I’m tired of finding the new bin’s contents strewn across the road each morning, I know it’s dangerous to frustrate the will of a fox – he will find a way to take it out on you.
On a warm Sunday morning I find the bin undisturbed. But I also find three tomato plants snapped off at the base, next to a big hole dug where I planted some seedlings the day before. This, I think, is his revenge.
But I don’t want to jump to conclusions about the culprit – I have many enemies in the natural world. It could be the squirrel, who is still digging up his buried cache of unshelled peanuts. I don’t know where he gets them – possibly from a wholesaler..
Or it could be a cat. It could be our cat. It’s even possible that my wife went to plant something there, saw the seedlings too late and then abandoned the hole in a bid to pin the crime on some animal. I will need to eliminate her from my inquiries.
Anyway I know the fox’s chief campaign is one of encroachment: to be everywhere always, pressing in on my territory. I catch him staring at me through the bars of the front gate while I’m tying up vines.
“Can I help you?” I say.
He gives me a look that says: tomatoes, is it?
“It’s none of your business, is what it is,” I say.
I spend some time trying to repair the damage, propping up withered seedlings, hoping they might take root again –but it’s too thankless a task to stick with for long. I end up inside watching the cricket. An hour turns into two. The TV keeps trying to turn itself off. My wife finds me this way: feet up, chin on chest.
“How’s it going?” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Some days I just think, what’s the point?”
“I meant the cricket,” she says. I notice she has a dot of mud on the bridge of her nose.
“Have you been digging?” I say.
“I’ve been weeding, yes,” she says, sitting down. “What about you?”
“I was just on my way back out there,” I say, standing up.
I return to the garden, where I find fresh holes. I go to my office shed to sit at my desk and shake my head. My phone rings. It’s my wife.
“I’ve been calling your name,” she says.
“I didn’t hear you,” I say.
“That’s because I’m calling it quietly
. Just come back in here,” she says.
I return to the living room, where my wife is standing by the door to the garden.
“You missed it,” she says.
“Missed what?” I say.
“This.” She shows me a picture on her phone: the fox peering through the same door.
“When was this?” I say.
“Just now,” she says. She scrolls to another picture: the fox standing on the plastic roof over the side return.
“He’s on my roof!” I say. When I replaced that roof after the fox put his foot through it some months ago, I used the same cheap corrugated plastic, believing I was under no obligation to support a fox’s weight. Now I understand what a false economy that was.
“So where is he now?” I say.
“He’s in your office!” shouts the middle one, from the kitchen.
“But I was just in my office!” I say. I think: he’s tailing me.
We go into the kitchen. Across the lawn, my office door is ajar. The fox pokes his head out, looks around, and then goes back inside.
“What, so he lives there now?” I say, stepping into the garden.
Eventually the fox wanders out of the door and, disregarding my presence, strolls up the path towards the wall.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I say. “Time to go.” The fox ignores me.
“He’s certainly in no hurry,” my wife says.
“It’s a bad sign,” I say.
“It’s completely normal,” my wife says. “A fox in a garden.”
“A terrible omen,” I say.
Later that afternoon I read an email from a west London neighbourhood app, about a woman in Shepherd’s Bush who came downstairs to find a muntjac deer in her living room.
I think: it’s the End of Days.
