about.

But when a fox finds an old hen or turkey straying about with a brood
of chicks, then the tactics are altogether different. Creeping up like
a cat, the fox watches an opportunity to seize a chick out of sight of
the mother bird. That done, he withdraws, silent as a shadow, his grip
on the chick's neck preventing any outcry. Hiding his game at a
distance, he creeps back to capture another in the same way; and so on
till he has enough, or till he is discovered, or some half-strangled
chick finds breath enough for a squawk. A hen or turkey knows the
danger by instinct, and hurries her brood into the open at the first
suspicion that a fox is watching.

A farmer, whom I know well, first told me how a fox manages to carry a
number of chicks at once. He heard a clamor from a hen-turkey and her
brood one day, and ran to a wood path in time to see a vixen make off
with a turkey chick scarcely larger than a robin. Several were
missing from the brood. He hunted about, and presently found five more
just killed. They were beautifully laid out, the bodies at a broad
angle, the necks crossing each other, like the corner of a corn-cob
house, in such a way that, by gripping the necks at the angle, all the
chicks could be carried at once, half hanging at either side of the
fox's mouth. Since then I have seen an old fox with what looked like a
dozen or more field-mice carried in this way; only, of course, the
tails were crossed corn-cob fashion instead of the necks.

The stealthiness with which a fox stalks his game is one of the most
remarkable things about him. Stupid chickens are not the only birds
captured. Once I read in the snow the story of his hunt after a
crow--wary game to be caught napping! The tracks showed that quite a
flock of crows had been walking about an old field, bordered by pine
and birch thickets. From the rock where he was sleeping away the
afternoon the fox saw or heard them, and crept down. How cautious he
was about it! Following the tracks, one could almost see him stealing
along from stone to bush, from bush to grass clump, so low that his
body pushed a deep trail in the snow, till he reached the cover of a
low pine on the very edge of the field. There he crouched with all
four feet close together under him. Then a crow came by within ten
feet of the ambush. The tracks showed that the bird was a bit
suspicious; he stopped often to look and listen. When his head was
turned aside for an instant the fox