creep"
and almost straight into her enemy's open jaws. The vixen preferred to
hide in the brambles to leeward of a burrow till an unsuspecting rabbit
crept out into the open. Vulp, since his adventure with the polecat,
bristled with rage whenever he crossed the track of a weasel, but never
dreamed of following; polecat and weasel were the same animal for aught
he knew to the contrary. The vixen, however, was not daunted by the
unpleasant memory of any such adventure; having chanced to see a weasel
in the act of killing a vole, she had recognised a rival and acted
accordingly. And so Vulp's repeated warnings to his mate on this matter
produced no effect beyond making her slightly more careful than she had
hitherto been to obtain a proper grip when she pounced on her savage
little quarry. The vixen was exceedingly fond of snails, and would
eagerly thrust a fore-paw into the crannies of any old wall or bank
where they hibernated; but Vulp much preferred to scratch up the moss
in a deserted gravel-pit, and grub in the loosened soil for the drowsy
blow-flies and beetles that had chosen the spot for their winter abode.
This was the reason for such different tastes: the vixen, when a cub,
had often basked in the sun near a snails' favourite resort, and had
there acquired a liking for the snails; while the fox, on the other
hand, had times out of number amused himself, in the first summer of his
life, by leaping and snapping at the flies as they buzzed among the
leaves when the mid-day sun was hot, and at the beetles as they boomed
along the narrow paths in the thicket near the "earth" when the moon
rolled up above the hedge, and the dark, mysterious shadows of
intersecting boughs foreshortened on the grass. But Vulp knew well, from
an unpleasant experience, the difference between a fly and a wasp.

One day in August, as he lay in his outdoor lair, the brightness and
heat of the sunshine were such that his eyes, blinking in the drowsiness
of half-awakened slumber, appeared like mere slits of black across
streaked orbs of yellow, and gave no indication of the fiery glow that
lit the round, distended pupils when he peered at nightfall through the
tangled undergrowth. His tongue lolled out, and he panted like a tired
hound, but from thirst rather than weariness. The flies annoyed him
greatly, now settling on his brush, till with a flick of his paw he
drove them away, then, nothing daunted, alighting on his back, his ears,
his haun