Remember those fables you were told as a child about the sly fox and the dumb chicken or goose? Well, they are based on fact, hard, cold facts. No word better described our intelligent, resident fox.
Red consistently fooled our dumb guard dog by laying his foxy scent in pointless circles. He knew Shadow, our dog, would follow his nose mindlessly and not use his eyes. However, we soon discovered Red was even more adept at nabbing chickens than outwitting our dog.
A few years ago, Michael was by the house when suddenly a streak of red caught his eye. He realized, with surprise, that this was our resident fox, out in broad daylight.
Michael lost sight of him for a few seconds but he yelled for our dog a moment later when he saw a large, white-feathered chicken in the fox’s mouth. Red looked over at the dog, who had leaped excitedly over a garden bed. The smart fox decided the heavy chicken wasn’t worth dying for and he immediately dropped his supper.
Quick thinking as always, even in a crisis, Red ran into some bushes between the chicken coop and the barn, squirmed out, changed directions and ran into the cornfield. Shadow was left in his wake, sniffing in circles among the bushes around the barn. Of course, our great guard dog didn’t catch on that the fox was long gone.
Meanwhile, Michael rushed over to the traumatized chicken. That chicken had not moved one feather since Red had dropped her, nor had she uttered a sound!
Chickens always cluck, especially when something startles them. The clucking then rises in pitch and speed and transforms into nerve rattling squawking.
Not this stunned bird. Michael noticed there wasn’t a scratch on her because the fox only bit down with his soft mouth. His teeth did not pierce the chicken’s skin at all, not one drop of blood. Michael gently placed the chicken back into the outdoor run and still she sat, silently like a statue!
We all marveled at the fox’s audacity because this episode occurred in broad daylight. Red did not even wait for the cover of darkness, nor did he care his enemy, our ‘guard dog’ was around. What he had done during daylight hours, for almost two weeks was sneak through the long grass just beyond the chicken wire fence then slip right into the chicken run and snatch birds.
The whole process had been a silent one. It seems the chickens were as shocked as we were and none of the birds raised the chicken alarm. We were oblivious to the fox’s tricks till the day when Red became a little too bold.
We quickly fixed the fence, thereby cutting off his easy pickings.
Do not feel sorry for the sly fox. He had a supply of ten chickens to last him a long time.
mother of nine9 
So foxes really are ‘sly’…
One day my husband went into the shed and noticed that a possum had died in there, it had fallen from the ceiling ledge into a great empty garbage tub about the height of his elbows. The possum must’ve been there a long time because the smell was noxious and it wasn’t moving. He figured it had died of starvation and thirst. He jiggled the tub around and shook it a bit and to his surprise, the dead possum moved slightly… Due to the pleas of one of our daughters, he decided not to finish the thing off, even as a mercy, and instead drove it to the savanna. There , under the watchful eye of his daughter, who was determined to see it through ( that the possum suffered no violence) , he tipped the tall bin over and then ran about 30 feet away… (you can never steer too clear of a ferocious possum.) Well that possum toddled out of that bin, and seeing my husband, quickly ran into the brush and disappeared. Point being, the possum had been playing possum the whole time… guess that expression comes from “hard, cold facts…” 🙂
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laughing…I LOVE this tale. why, I think if might be even better than my fox story
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It’s a true story, and when my baffled husband came home and told me his shock and surprise that the critter had been faking it the whole time, I had to tell him, “Maybe that’s why they call it, ‘playing possum?’ Only then did he realize what had happened!
Also, I was wondering, what happened to the stunned chicken that wouldn’t move? Was it ok? Did it get over its shock?
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It took a while but eventually it was fine. My husband lifted it up, set it down in the outdoor run and it still did not move for a few minutes. This is so un-chicken-like because usually they run around in frantic circles, squawking like fools whenever they feel threatened. Chickens ARE chicken, ya know.
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