The Constant Rabbit

The weasels all worked in the intelligence community and in what could be described as either nominative determinism or simply playing up to their own stereotype were weaselly sorts of creatures. The only one I knew reasonably well was Adrian Whizelle, who had tried to sapienise his name³¹ to appear less weaselly.

The caterpillar, in contrast, had taken to the Event badly and immediately formed into a chrysalis from which s/he was yet to emerge. S/he is currently hanging up in a large cupboard inside the Natural History Museum; you can view her/him on live webcam.

No one knows what happened to the bees.

‘How’s that delightful daughter of yours?’ asked Mr Ffoxe, his comment relating to the ‘bring a child to work day’ that soured soon after his unplanned arrival in the office. Pippa had been fourteen at the time and became the focus of Mr Ffoxe’s attentions, which were inappropriately suggestive and, had he been human, grounds for instant dismissal and possibly a criminal investigation.

‘She’s well,’ I said, trying to seem cold and disdainful but actually sounding plaintive and apologetic.

‘Is she still exceptionally pleasing to the eye?’ he asked. ‘We must reacquaint ourselves now those tiresome consent rules are past us.’

His small yellow eyes bored into me, and a dribble of saliva oozed from the side of his mouth. ‘Repellent’ couldn’t even begin to describe him.

‘I think I can speak for Pippa when I say she despises you,’ I replied.

He grinned again.

‘Quite the little minx. Well, her loss.’

Owing to small litter sizes and an impenetrably long and complicated mating ritual that required Michelin-starred dinner dates and visits to Glyndebourne, foxes had not reproduced nearly as well as rabbits. From the two vixens and a dog at Event Zero there were now a shade under six thousand individuals. They had become increasingly urbane over the years and insisted on sending their cubs to public schools, quoting Latin in a fatuous and pretentious manner whenever possible and respelling their surnames with a dazzling array of ridiculous affectations. There was plain ‘Mr Fox’, then about forty other permutations that included: Foxe, Ffoxe, Phocks, Phoxse, Forcks, Fforkse, Fourks, Fourxe, Foix, Fux, Foxx and Phourxes. All, without exception, were pronounced ‘Fox’.

Unlike the rabbit, the foxes had secured British citizenship on the dubious legal grounds that the then Home Secretary liked ‘the cut of their jib’, but they also retained, in a unique legal ruling, dual taxonomic status. They were legally human but also allowed to be fox when the mood took them, or the job required it. They were also notoriously, painfully, cunning. There was a saying: you can never outfox the fox.

‘So,’ said Mr Ffoxe, ‘let’s have the cash.’

I handed him the receipt for signing and he withdrew an expensive pen from his top pocket and signed the docket before handing it back, and I passed over the cash.

‘OK, then,’ he said, stuffing the cash in his breast pocket, ‘let’s talk about the operation in Ross. Lugless tells me you haven’t been embracing the sort of enthusiasm we like to see in our staff. With the Rabbit Underground threatening to upset the peaceful status quo of this green and pleasant land you need to try a little harder. Whizelle says you’ve been staring at pictures of Labstock for several weeks and haven’t fingered a single one.’

I swallowed nervously.

‘I haven’t found him yet. These things take time.’

He moved closer, the heavy scent of Old Spice cologne suddenly filling the air like fog. Foxes used it to disguise their scent from rabbits as they moved in for the kill. And foxes were permitted to kill rabbits. At the High Court in 1978, Fox v. Rabbit established that a fox killing a rabbit – while taxonomically a fox – was legally defensible on the grounds of ‘long-founded predation of historically natural prey’. It gave legality to their job as rabbit enforcers, and although it was legal for a rabbit to kill a fox in self-defence ‘once all other avenues of escape had been exhausted and the law’s definition of proportionality as it appertained to rabbits had been tested in the courts’, rabbits rarely did, owing to … reprisals.