Fantastic Mr Fox
Feb 26, 2020
4 minutes
John Lewis-Stempel
Illustrations by Philip Bannister
THERE’S a bit of a dingle below the house. Nobody goes there much. The floor is black mire, and the trees when living hold a sullen silence, and when fallen down dead are tangled wrecks.
In the dingle, all the world’s mists are manufactured. Strange creatures inhabit the place. I saw a wryneck there once, clasping a limb of oak like a grey lizard (or a canker). On another occasion, I was surprised by an albino grass snake. In the dingle, I’ve watched a weasel ‘waltz’—my inner Romantic attributed the eurhythmy to ; my inner scientist suggestedin the weasel’s brain.
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