Foxes Return “Some say that when the yelping kind [of fox] are old, they become monsters. They wear a dry skull on their heads, clothe themselves with oak leaves, and assume a human guise. These creatures do harm in countless ways. People set fire to the mountains and dig up their burrows, grasping arrows and driving their hounds, thinking if fox kind is eradicated, monstrosity will cease. They do not know that although foxes can become monsters, they do not necessarily do so. Once in a while one becomes a monster, but they do not all become monsters…” He Bang’e, 1791, in Occasional Records of Conversations at Night As a child, I feared whistling too loudly at night. When the evening would begin to settle into the night with its dark blue seeping silent through the night sky, I would grow wary, and if the back door and the windows of my house were left open with the white curtains curling and shifting in an uneasy carrying breeze, my breath would grow short as fear twined its way around my ankles. Standing in my kitchen under the flickering fluorescence of the overhead lamp, watching the curtains’ small movements, I knew that with the arrival of night, they too would come. I had a fear of foxes, you see. I feared the foxes who lurked just beyond the limits of my neighborhood, who waited just beyond the blockade of painted white balustrades, the neat white fences that encircled our backyards where the neighborhood kids threw Frisbees and footballs around. I feared the foxes who waited for the lights to go down and for the doors to lock and for the windows to shutter closed, before they would come creeping out from the shadows they inhabited. I feared their flat faces that they would shove into our mailbox slots and hedges, snouts snuffling noisily along the edges of our windows, scenting for wisps of human breath that wafted through the cracks in our windows. I feared their skinny red bodies and their pointed swiveling ears and their waving tails and I feared the whispering of their whiskers against the painted walls of our house, brushing and twitching as their noses laid tracks along our walls, sniffing. Looking for a way in. I feared being caught awake at night and finding myself standing in my kitchen, looking out through the open kitchen door and seeing their glowing slanted eyes moving inexorably forward through the sky’s impenetrable implacable blackness. But I knew the foxes would only appear if you whistled for them. Foxes are like dogs, you know. Call them forth and they will come. So even if I had no prior intent
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