Meatball - A Fox's Story

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

I am very cold and very tired.
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My coat itches and even though I groom it just like Mama taught me, it keeps getting thinner and coarser. I cannot bite or scratch the itch out, not even if I scrape against rough bark and roll in stony grass.

The winter comes, hungry and howling, and I do not think I will see the spring. Still, I do what I must to survive. I chase food and warmth and safe dens for myself. Most of the time, all three are hard to find.

Then one day, I wiggle under a branchless wood wall and cross a flat stony hollow, following the feel of warmth.

 It leads me to a den, a two-leg den. I can see them watch me from behind their dry ice wall. They make their strange sounds and wave their furless paws at me. I draw close because it is warm and these two-legs do not seem interested in hunting me.
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Two-legs are like that. Sometimes friendly, sometimes not. It's good to be wary of them, but I am a clever fox, and I can tell which to trust. I linger in the warmth from their den, and then leave to find food.

But I remember them. When the winter wind bites hard at me, it drives me back to their territory. And this time, there is food. Small rounds of meat on flat white stones. I am so hungry that I eat it, even if I know that sometimes meat from two-legs kills.

But it doesn't kill me.

And it keeps being left for me.

I watch the two-legs enough to know it's true. They leave their little stones with the meat rounds on them, and they call in their strange tongue a sound I begin to learn is for me. And the more I eat the meat, the better I feel. My skin stops itching. My fur stops graying and falling out. I am not so tired all the time. I can run and play and hunt!

And as winter leaves, chased away by bright spring, my fur grows back: orange and red and thick and soft.

Sometimes, the two-legs don't immediately retreat after leaving the meat for me. And sometimes the dry ice wall is broken enough to let me poke my nose into their den. They don't mind if I intrude, though I make sure never to go too far in. That is how dens become traps.

Two-legs can be friendly, and these two-legs especially, but all two-legs are fond of traps. There are two cats in their den who are trapped there. They don't like me, and yowl in displeasure that the den has not trapped them, they have simply claimed it as their own.

(I do not argue with them. There is never any use in arguing with cats. They are always very sure of themselves and their opinions.)

Time passes. Spring swells into summer and fades into fall, and then winter buries it in snow and rain and biting wind. But my fur is thick and warm and my belly is full, and I have many dens...but the two-legs' territory with their offerings of meat and stone are always there if I want them.
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I think I will see many springs.

This short story was inspired by Meatball the fox, as seen on tik-tok.