A farmer, whom I know well, first told me how a fox manages to carry a number of chicks at once.  He heard a clamor from a hen-turkey and her brood one day, and ran to a wood path in time to see a vixen make off with a turkey chick scarcely larger than a robin.  Several were missing from the brood.  He hunted about, and presently found five more just killed.  They were beautifully laid out, the bodies at a broad angle, the necks crossing each other, like the corner of a corn-cob house, in such a way that, by gripping the necks at the angle, all the chicks could be carried at once, half hanging at either side of the fox’s mouth.  Since then I have seen an old fox with what looked like a dozen or more field-mice carried in this way; only, of course, the tails were crossed corn-cob fashion instead of the necks.

The stealthiness with which a fox stalks his game is one of the most remarkable things about him.  Stupid chickens are not the only birds captured.  Once I read in the snow the story of his hunt after a crow—­wary game to be caught napping!  The tracks showed that quite a flock of crows had been walking about an old field, bordered by pine and birch thickets.  From the rock where he was sleeping away the afternoon the fox saw or heard them, and crept down.  How cautious he was about it!  Following the tracks, one could almost see him stealing along from stone to bush, from bush to grass clump, so low that his body pushed a deep trail in the snow, till he reached the cover of a low pine on the very edge of the field.  There he crouched with all four feet close together under him.  Then a crow came by within ten feet of the ambush.  The tracks showed that the bird was a bit suspicious; he stopped often to look and listen.  When his head was turned aside for an instant the fox launched himself; just two jumps, and he had him.  Quick as he was, the wing marks showed that the crow had started, and was pulled down out of the air.  Reynard carried him into the densest thicket of scrub pines he could find, and ate him there, doubtless to avoid the attacks of the rest of the flock, which followed him screaming vengeance.

A strong enmity exists between crows and foxes.  Wherever a crow finds a fox, he sets up a clatter that draws a flock about him in no time, in great excitement.  They chase the fox as long as he is in sight, cawing vociferously, till he creeps into a thicket of scrub pines, into which no crow will ever venture, and lies down till he tires out their patience.  In hunting, one may frequently trace the exact course of a fox which the dogs are driving, by the crows clamoring over him.  Here in the snow was a record that may help explain one side of the feud.