by A chip fork arrives with curatorial intent while negotiations continue on the wall
Friday. The fox and I have reached a new stage of our relationship, which is to say he has begun leaving me things. This morning, centred on the doormat with what I can only describe as curatorial intent, one gardening glove, not mine, one half of a tennis ball, and a chip fork, arranged, diary, arranged, and I stood at the door with my tea and understood that I am being courted, or invoiced, by a wild animal, and that I have no idea which, and that this is the most interesting correspondence I currently receive.
The fox, whom I have not named because naming him would formalise a relationship neither of us has defined, has patrolled this garden for three years, entering over the left wall at dusk with the punctuality of a shift worker, crossing the lawn on his fixed diagonal, pausing at the pond for what I maintain is reflection and my neighbour maintains is frogs, and exiting over the right wall into the night’s other appointments. We regard each other through the kitchen window nightly. He holds my gaze with the level assessment of a creature who pays no rent and fears no committee, and I hold his with the expression of a woman who did not plan to be in a silent three-year dialogue with a fox and yet checks for him now, every dusk, and is disappointed, actually disappointed, on the nights the wall stays empty. The Wildlife Trusts pages estimate the urban fox population in the tens of thousands, a whole parallel London running on our timetable’s reverse, commuting our gardens while we sleep, and I say let the record show they maintain the infrastructure beautifully, the walls patrolled, the pigeons audited, the bins reviewed, thoroughly, at two, with percussion.
The Question of the Gifts
I consulted Margaret on the doormat deposits, Margaret being the street’s authority on all matters predating the internet, and she said her mother’s garden fox in the fifties did the same, shoes mostly, single shoes, an entire cobbler’s window of them over the years, and that her mother held the fox was paying rent, and paid it in the only currency a fox recognises, which is interesting objects, the fox economy running on interest in both senses. I choose Margaret’s mother’s interpretation. The alternative theories, that the glove and the fork are simply abandoned mid-transport, that I am a storage depot rather than a beloved, are available, and I decline them. A woman my age is entitled to select her mythology, and I have selected the one where the fox finds me worth a chip fork. Show me the flaw. There is none. The tennis ball half I have placed on the garden wall, a counter-gift, and negotiations continue.
My neighbour two doors down, the one with the vegetable beds, holds the opposing portfolio in fox relations, having lost seedlings to excavation, and our conversations over the wall have the careful diplomacy of two nations with different fox policies sharing a border. She deploys deterrents, citrus peel, ultrasonic devices the fox reportedly attends like a concert, and a plastic heron whose presence baffles all species including herons. I deploy nothing and receive cutlery. We have agreed a joint communique, the fox is a rogue actor, relations are each household’s own affair, and neither of us shall escalate to the council, the council having a fox form, of course it has a form, and the form having, per Doris who has seen it, a box for describe the behaviour, a box I could fill only with the truth, which is, behaves like he owns the place, which he does, which the form is not prepared to hear.
Dusk Audit
Tonight he came over the left wall at eight forty, on schedule, crossed the diagonal, paused at the pond, reflection or frogs, the debate continues, and then, diary, he stopped at the counter-gift, the half ball on the wall, considered it a long moment in the last light, took it, cleanly, and was gone over the right wall with his payment, and I stood at the kitchen window absurdly moved, a shareholder whose dividend has cleared, a woman whose invoice was honoured, and I said aloud, to the empty kitchen, well then, which in this house is a full paragraph, and put the kettle on in his general honour.
Filed with the satirical desk at The London Prat, and posted the account to Bohiney Magazine, whose correspondent reports the American suburban equivalent is the raccoon, a masked auditor of similar hours and stronger opinions, capable of opening latches, actual latches, and we have agreed the Atlantic divides our wildlife on brains versus manners, their raccoon the cleverer, our fox the better dressed, both of them running the night shift of civilisations that flatter themselves the day shift is the main one.
Tally, one glove, one fork, one half ball accepted in settlement, one communique holding, the kettle boiled in honour. The mythology is selected and I am keeping it. He is over the walls somewhere now with his tennis ball, patrolling the reverse city, and the doormat, tomorrow, will report. I have moved the good glove inside. A woman courts, but a woman is not made of gloves.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk
