His way of beguiling a duck is more remarkable than his fishing.  Late one afternoon, while following the shore of a pond, I noticed a commotion among some tame ducks, and stopped to see what it was about.  They were swimming in circles, quacking and stretching their wings, evidently in great excitement.  A few minutes’ watching convinced me that something on the shore excited them.  Their heads were straight up from the water, looking fixedly at something that I could not see; every circle brought them nearer the bank.  I walked towards them, not very cautiously, I am sorry to say; for the farmhouse where the ducks belonged was in plain sight, and I was not expecting anything unusual.  As I glanced over the bank something slipped out of sight into the tall grass.  I followed the waving tops intently, and caught one sure glimpse of a fox as he disappeared into the woods.

The thing puzzled me for years, though I suspected some foxy trick, till a duck-hunter explained to me what Reynard was doing.  He had seen it tried successfully once on a flock of wild ducks.—­

When a fox finds a flock of ducks feeding near shore, he trots down and begins to play on the beach in plain sight, watching the birds the while out of the “tail o’ his ee,” as a Scotchman would say.  Ducks are full of curiosity, especially about unusual colors and objects too small to frighten them; so the playing animal speedily excites a lively interest.  They stop feeding, gather close together, spread, circle, come together again, stretching their necks as straight as strings to look and listen.

Then the fox really begins his performance.  He jumps high to snap at imaginary flies; he chases his bushy tail; he rolls over and over in clouds of flying sand; he gallops up the shore, and back like a whirlwind; he plays peekaboo with every bush.  The foolish birds grow excited; they swim in smaller circles, quacking nervously, drawing nearer and nearer to get a better look at the strange performance.  They are long in coming, but curiosity always gets the better of them; those in the rear crowd the front rank forward.  All the while the show goes on, the performer paying not the slightest attention apparently to his excited audience; only he draws slowly back from the water’s edge, as if to give them room as they crowd nearer.

They are on shore at last; then, while they are lost in the most astonishing caper of all, the fox dashes among them, throwing them into the wildest confusion.  His first snap never fails to throw a duck back onto the sand with a broken neck; and he has generally time for a second, often for a third, before the flock escapes into deep water.  Then he buries all his birds but one, throws that across his shoulders, and trots off, wagging his head, to some quiet spot where he can eat his dinner and take a good nap undisturbed.