A Very Remarkable Fox

There once was a fox that entered a hen house and ate up all the hens and their eggs and, because he was a particularly greedy fox, ate the brightly coloured rooster too.

But he was so stuffed after eating all that food that he felt too tired to run away and so, when the farmer came out the next morning to collect the eggs, the fox just hid under an old bucket.

Well, of course, when the farmer saw what had become of his hens and his rooster he was very sad not to mention terribly angry.

“Garr!”, shouted the farmer, “If I ever catch that fox, I’ll tear him to pieces, I will”.

And hearing the farmer get so angry, the fox chuckled to himself,

“Hee-hee”, he said, “That’ll be the day, when you catch me you old fool”.

But then, all of a sudden, from inside the belly of the fox, there came a very loud noise.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!”, went the noise, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”.

It was the sound of the cock crowing because the sun had risen in the sky.

“Oh, shhh, be quiet please”, said the fox to his stomach, “Or you’ll give me away”.

But the cockerel inside the foxes belly kept on crowing and, hearing the noise, the farmer lifted up the old bucket and though the fox tried to run away, the farmer caught him by his big bushy tail.

Now, at first, the farmer was so angry with the fox that he was going to wring its neck but then, out of the stomach of the fox he heard the cockerel crow.

“Cock-a-doodle- doo!”, it went, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”.

“Hmm?”, thought the farmer scratching his chin, “I’ve never seen a fox that crowed like a cockerel before. That’s a very rare thing indeed, is that”.

Then, suddenly, the farmers eyes lit up as a marvellous thought occurred to him.

“Perhaps, you can pay me back for all those chickens you ate, Mr Fox”, he said, “Yes, that’s a very good idea”.

And the next day there were big crowds of people in the farm; they were all gathered around a large stripy circus tent and paying lots of money to get in.

That’s because they had all come to see “Farmer Brown’s Amazing Crowing Fox”.

And the farmer made so much money through its crowing, enough to buy 600 hens, that he forgave the fox and let it go back into the wild.

“But don’t come back, mind you”, he told the fox, “or it’ll take more than crowing to save you”.

And the fox never did come back but, once in a while, so it is said, people walking through the forest on moonlit nights catch a glimpse of a very mysterious and remarkable creature, a fox that goes “COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!”.