Jolyon has a book out today, and Guido has been sent the one chapter anyone will actually want to read. While it’s by no means Shakespeare, it is perhaps the most entertaining six pages of prose to be published in recent history. This is the day Jolyon bludgeoned that innocent fox, told from the perspective of the killer himself…
“I got out of bed, looked out the window, and saw a fox racing around the Eglu. This was not the first such raid – hence the double perimeter – but it was the first time a fox had breached the poultry netting. It was now trying to work out how to breach the Eglu. I got out of bed and put on one of the unisex traditional cotton dressing robes we had acquired on a visit to my wife’s family in Java, the Indonesian word for which is ‘kimono‘.”
Guido was hooked by this point already, even if Jolyon does seem to get out of bed twice within four sentences. It gets better…
“Things then began to move quickly. I went downstairs, let myself out the door, and approached the Eglu. Seeing me coming, the fox dived for one of the loops in the netting and discovered, to its and my alarm, that it was too small. So there we were. The chickens in a state of high distress, me underprepared, and a very anxious fox trapped in the netting. I grabbed the baseball bat I kept to hand and despatched it.”
Exactly why Jolyon keeps a baseball hat to hand at home isn’t clear. Presumably he needs to be prepared for any intruder, vulpine or otherwise. (Implying that his baseball battering of any intruder would be premeditated. Is that lawful?) He goes on:
“But the clearest truth is my wife’s: that she doesn’t need to look at the date to tell a ‘before’ from an ‘after’ photo. Those months will always remain written on my face.”
There is one small silver lining to emerge from this harrowing episode: this week the Telegraph revealed a conservation charity is hiring contractors for up to £92,000 to kill foxes “away from public view“. If the book doesn’t make the New York Times Best Sellers list, there’s always an alternative career path…
