It took her half an hour to get the trap open. The fox panted and made a high sound she had not heard from the ones who used to mate or hunt rabbits out the back of the house. Its leg was caught good. She wrenched and forced. Her hands bled onto the rush of reddish fur. When it was done the fox started up the bank and she gave a gentle tug on the leash she’d attached around its neck and it fell back and looked at her with an astonishment that almost made her let it go then and there.

She dragged the fox on. The lights of a car were coming over the rough, holed concrete road. The pylons went on and on in the sheer beam of it. She came up short on the verge and tried to wrestle the fox hedge wise but it got its mouth pretty sharpish around her wrist and bit down. The car rolled on and then stopped. She could see nothing of the driver but their gloved hands on the wheel. She could smell the fresh rage of the fox, the pissed off stench of it. The car got moving again. Was past them and flashing its red taillights in farewell and she thinking there can’t have been many other places where people would mind their business the way they did in the fen.

It got light fast, in a rushed wash that caught at the awkward rise of the pylons, at the thin fen trees and then landed ground ways on both hands. She could see the lights on in some of the houses they passed, hear the sound of televisions and raised voices. They were almost there when the fox sat down and would not move. She strained at the leash, it tightened its neck, stretched its head away. Its leg left patterned red on the road. It panted evenly, looked away from her at the whitening stretch of land. She came at it with both arms out, upped it onto her hip, held its snout closed tight. Stumbled on.