At home this morning with my sick boy, we were both alarmed when the dogs went off their heads. Jemma Jack Russell was hysterical and Milo Goof Head Irish Wolfhound caught the fever and was leaping around like an oversized Jack Rabbit. I had left the gate open when I took the smaller kids to the bus, so I guessed a local dog had wandered in.
Not quite. It was a fox and he was standing on the mobile chook-run, worrying the Pekin family I have in there. He didn’t care when I bashed on the window, and barely looked up when I let Jemma (rabid with rage) out to see him off. It was such a shock to see a fox attacking in broad daylight, a desperate measure indeed. In fact the fox was so crazed with whatever disease he apparently had that he ran up to the back door, like I might let him in.
I’d never seen such a poor, mangy looking specimen with great patches of fur missing along his spine, and flaky grey skin showing through. The brush of a foxes tail didn’t exist on him – he had merely a stick. I’ve only ever seen half starved dingos around the parking areas of Alice Springs look so poorly and I’m surprised because we’re tripping over rabbits at the moment, despite the drought.
It was a tribute to the Uncle Joe’s Mobile Chook Run that he didn’t have a hope of getting into my chickens, not even the 6 week old chick in there, and I was lucky he didn’t try to scale the large coop which would have been easier to break into with that amount of desperation and I’m still shocked that he wasn’t concerned about my presence at all. I held Milo back because he would have chased him off the property and then gotten lost (and shot if he wandered onto sheep paddocks) but Jemma gave him short shift. The fox left the property about 20 minutes ago and Jemma is still out there carrying on:
“I may well have been lying inside, snoring on the big bed before, but I’m out here now buddy and you better not even THINK about coming back! I’ll rip you apart! I’ll tear you to pieces! I’m watching you and I’ve got this perimeter sorted! You were lucky this time, but never again! You hear me?? Never again! I’m tough, I’m bad! That’s right! I’m…ooohh, there’s some toast one of the kids dropped…I’m hungry, NO, I’m badf, I’ll chewf yourf head off like this toast, mmmmmmff, you hear me?”
She’s barely paused for breath. Even the chooks are starting to look like they’re getting a headache.
Heathens…
