The Unknown Fox

Night had completely covered the hilltop by the time the mother fox sniffed the tufts of grass beneath her feet and she was still hungry and desperate in search of her young cub.

The mother had been patient, knew how to trace the regular moments and had often faced humans so close which meant that she was able to face them off and had happened to be swiveling with their moves.

This time the case had been a different one though, the mother didn't want to admit it, the cub had been killed and there was no hope of getting it back. As it happens in the creature community, accepting the child is dead, is a more painful affair and the same was with this fox.

It had become restless in search of her child and this had provoked her man eating tendencies, not to say the least, her tendencies to hunt for pleasure lately. The fox had been usually seen in nights across the village, but now it had also started to take its opportunities in the daylight and hence the attacks had become poplar through news channel, demanding to shoot the creature without any remorse mercy.

What was not understood was that why such a fox had become so hungry that it had started to kill human children. There was no evidence that humans were responsible for the death of her cub, but still there was something unusual about this unknown fox.

It had not only started to munch dead bones, but also in search of dead bodies and in this way it had become a man eater. Getting the taste of some people dead across the river from where it had first arrived in her life.

It seems that the river from where it came was the popular place for disposing off the corpse of people recently dead in village and nearby locality and hence, recognizing the smell as all the omnivorous creatures do, it had started to find them out and often than not dived inside the river to catch the drowning dead mass.

This taste of humans had served its content at large and made it a wild beast that roamed in the fearsome memories of the local people and was the reason of their wining all across the village.

This didn't mean that there had been a single case of a child being peppered to death by this unknown fox and these cases had resulted in humiliation of the bond between the forest and the rural village community. It looked like that the 'Unknown fox' would be hunted by them in desperation. But only if they could find the same which is still a shadow to those who haven't seen the beast in the forest.

Weeks passed by and there were no sign of that howling fox and as it seemed the people of the village had not started again the disposing off the dead.The groups would come to the river, would collect logs from the forest and would burn the bodies into ashes making the place gray and immersing the ashes in the river.

Besides the fox, some cat fishes had also started to munch at dead bones and it seemed that they would become more fearsome than the haunted creature, which bothered the villagers a lot in past.

Yet after 3 weeks of patience, calm resistance and equal determination, the fox was sighted and it had once again silently crouched nearby a small cottage, smashing the door with its claws, and taking with it, a sleeping child which it would surely munch in as its night meal.

Though the creature had no idea that it was a trap this time and the child it had lifted was a plastic replica of a human child, brought by an urban scientist who had been sent few days ago when the disposing the dead had increased due to an epidemic spread across and hence the villagers were sure that the fox would not only come to search for the dead mass but also would try to attack their children for which they had pleaded to this scholar to aid them in such a critical situation.

As soon as the fox tore open the plastic child, a small flash of light hit its face and it seemed that it glowed for a second and then vanished. In response the fox howled and was heard by the scientist's team. A man from the team was quick to chase it and grabbed its tail, wrestling it down to the floor.

After 15 minutes of panting and wrestling, the man was able to grab the whole creature and trap it inside the cage after giving it a doze of medicine and striking it silent with a sedative so that it now safely felt asleep inside the cage brought together by the clever man.

As soon the scientist reached the local periphery, there was a loud cheer in his honor and he bowed to the people in sense of gratitude. However before leaving he turned towards them and explained to them that the real relationship between the creatures and humans in such a small living territory.

He gave a short speech, showed how the fox was in control, and once convinced that people won't kill the fox and same would be done by the others, he closed his car's window pane and turned his vehicle to the road that would lead to his popular house.