Fortunately for me and especially for my chickens, I happened to be in the right place at the right time on Saturday. A fox emerged from the woodland bordering our chicken's play area. Bold as you like, all casual, he strode purposefully toward eight feathery dinners whose reaction was loud, panicky and jittery to say the least. And this in broad daylight at three o'clock in the afternoon.
Had I not expressed succinctly, and in words that I'd rather not repeat here, my desire for the fox to be elsewhere, I dread to think what might have ensued - I have seen photographs depicting the aftermath of such encounters and it's not an edifying sight. The fox, clearly comprehending my instructions, turned in an equally casual manner, and strolled back from whence he came. I then spent some time clearing the accumulated leaf mass of last Autumn's fall from the lower strands of the electric netting surrounding my chickens, thus improving the level of shock discharged into whatever creature dares to venture near. My chickens gradually calmed down, the cacophony of their clucking diminishing over several minutes.
This incident got me thinking. I wished the fox dead. And if I'd had a twelve-bore cradled over my arm it would have been cocked, lifted and fired, hopefully hitting its target full square. BLAM! Dead fox. Would I have felt any guilt? Would I have wrangled with the moral anguish at having killed a beautiful creature? No. Most certainly, no.
I can't keep a few chickens without lashing out a fortune on electric fencing, fox-proof housing and suffering from constant subliminal worry. The fox is not even indigenous. It was brought over here as a plaything for folk with an excess of horses and hounds who couldn't work out what to do with them. It is a vicious killer. If I hadn't been there at the right time, it wouldn't have nabbed a single chicken to fill its belly with raw meat and cleared off. It would have killed the lot. All of them. And when it had finished its murderous quest, it might have taken one for its lunch.
My neighbour kept chickens. Sadly, they were all killed by a fox. The carnage upset her and her daughter so much that she can't bring herself to keep chickens again. She couldn't possibly risk going through that again. The images still haunt her. She loved keeping chickens. They are, after all, not just providers of fresh eggs, but a delight to watch and look after. The fox has put an end to that.
And this brings me to the title of this blog - anthropomorphism. The attribution of human characteristics to animals is one definition of the word. I remember my young days. I remember reading to my children. I remember Basil Brush, Disney's version of Robin Hood, A Bug's Life, Beatrix Potter, The Jungle Book, Alice in Wonderland - the list is almost endless...
I'm not being curmudgeonly here. Children's stories involving animals are generally fun, imaginative, creative, delightful, sweet, morally expansive. And I have no issue with Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Peter Rabbit, Mr. Toad and their ilk. What I do have issue with is the personification of creatures that, actually, aren't very nice. Either that or creatures, such as insects, that are merely a collection of cells that perform some function or other. Slugs, snails, flies, ants - they don't have personalities! They don't have emotions, feelings, thoughts, dreams, ideas. They are not Brian the snail from the Magic Roundabout. They are not ants from A Bug's Life. Robin Hood was not a bloody fox, for chrissakes!
Young people are indoctrinated to believe that every god-damned creature on this earth is blessed with human feelings, personalities, aspirations, worries. And where does this lead? Believing it cruel to squash slugs and snails, to liberally sprinkle Nippon near an ant's nest, to swat a fly that insists on persistently landing on your head. It is dragged into adulthood with a ban on hunting foxes.
Some creatures are plain nasty. Evil killing machines. Some creatures will devastate your vegetable plot, suck the blood from your chickens, spread disease. I'm not saying that humans rule the world, that all other creatures should dance to our tune and those that don't should be exterminated at will with no compunction whatsoever. Live and let live is what I generally believe. The natural world, let's face it, involves a food chain in which creatures of increasing size devour those creatures that are bite-sized and give off a Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pud appeal. It's a vicious world out there. But let's not give every single animated bunch of cells a bleeding personality!
Kids. Listen. Foxes are not cute and cuddly. Yes, they're beautiful. Like a tiger is beautiful. Yes, they have to eat and yes, they eat meat. But they don't pick off a light snack, an old or sick chicken, like the survival of the fittest films you've seen on the telly where the old and sick wildebeest are picked off by hungry lions. How would you feel watching a lion kill and entire herd of wildebeest and then eating only one of them? Hmm? Imagine that. Try to envisage the scene in your mind's eye. Would the lion be maintaining the wildebeest herd, ensuring its survival, ensuring the strongest and healthiest wildebeest make baby wildebeests? Or would the entire herd be wiped out by one evil, greedy and frankly bloody stupid Berk of a lion?
That's your fox. Stupid, evil, greedy. Just because it's pretty, don't make it nice.
I was brought up with anthropomorphous animals in story books and on films. And I lied earlier. I would have felt some guilt, some internal anguish about killing a fox. But I would have blamed any of that on Basil Brush or, more accurately, his creator. I'm not saying that we should scare the hell out of little kids by revealing the reality of what certain creatures do to survive. I'm not saying that we should condone the killing of wild animals willy nilly. What I am saying is let's stop the sentimental cloaking of reality, for certain creatures, in the name of a children's story.
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