Fox Returns Single Shoe, Offers No Explanation
The shoe was taken from a back step in June. It was returned to the same step in September, cleaned, and facing the house.
A fox has returned a single garden shoe to the back step from which it was removed eleven weeks earlier, placing it upright, facing the door, and leaving before anyone came down.
The shoe, a left one, was taken in June along with a glove and a plastic trowel, neither of which has been seen since. It came back noticeably cleaner than it left, an outcome the household has been unable to account for and about which the fox has said nothing.
Pressed on the matter at the end of the garden, the fox indicated that it does not consider itself to have returned anything, on the grounds that the shoe had simply finished. Asked what the shoe had been doing in the intervening period, the fox looked at the hedge for a while and then left, in the manner of a witness who has decided the interview is over.
The household has moved all remaining footwear indoors. The fox continues to visit nightly and has been observed sitting on the step where the shoe was, for periods of up to four minutes, which observers describe as either sentiment or planning.
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