Leftovers
This evening we ate roasted chicken with suitable accompaniments. Two hours later, I stripped as much remaining chicken meat from the carcass as I could. Then I put the stripped carcass and all remaining pieces out on the lawn. This has been my habit for years now. In winter months, when darkness falls early, I never get to see the disappearance of the leftovers but tonight with summer evenings returning, I looked out and saw a wary dog fox patrolling the lawn, sniffing here and looking there. This was less than five minutes after I had taken the roasting tin outside. I am sure he was a little nervous in case he was about to become the victim of a cunning trap in which a fresh cooked chicken carcass might in fact be bait. But he had no need to worry. Quick as a flash, he gripped the chicken in his jaws and ran off into the shrubbery with it. Urban foxes are so clever, so opportunistic and their sense of smell must be so supreme that it is hard for we mere humans to imagine. To sur...