The Fox Fur

I am almost embarrassed to admit that spread out along the armrest of a lounge chair, a fox fur complete with head and feet has found a refuge in our home. Rescued from an op shop, it seems relaxed on its elevated bed and sleeps with its glass eyes open, snout closed and missing its teeth. It has become a novel oddity giving an accent to the decor of the room. Considered vermin in this country, the fox is hunted and treated as a pest. A ten dollar bounty is still paid for each scalp whether fresh, frozen or dried. Vulnerable native species are no match for its cunning and killer instinct. Its presence in our home could be excused as a symbol of the righteous fight to rid ourselves of this villian, the stuffed remains a trophy to mark the measure of our meager success in culling it from the continent. But I somehow feel for the life that once filled this gutted creature and all that it was in the span of its despised existence. Here it has its final rest not as vermin but more a victim sacrificed on fashions alter, its first ancestors brought to these shores by wealthy landowners to satisfy their lust for the hunt. This animal was no willing immigrant but meant to be bloodsport for a few and ripped apart by dogs. I find myself in two minds, a part of me wanting to erase all evidence of our more primitive instincts to adorn human life with what has been taken from other species. Yet I see how some of its perfection has transcended life and the furriers art and lays here in this house, magnificent, acknowledged and admired, instead of being carted off, despised or pitied, at the bottom of a bin.