The Fox Cub Bold
First edition
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| Author | Colin Dann |
|---|---|
| Illustrator |
Terry Riley cover artist Frances Broomfield |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Animals of Farthing Wood (book series) |
| Genre | Children's, Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Hutchinson |
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Publication date
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1983 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 164 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | (first edition, hardback) |
| OCLC | 59083200 |
| Preceded by | Fox's Feud |
| Followed by | The Siege of White Deer Park |
Terry Riley
The Fox Cub Bold is the fourth book of The Animals of Farthing Wood series. It was first published in 1983 and has since been included in a single book with Fox's Feud and in the "Omnibus" edition (Hutchinson, 1994) with Fox's Feud and In the Grip of Winter.
Having left White Deer Park after the defeat of Scarface, Bold is exploring his new surroundings which he refers to as "the real world". He sees a magpie, which criticises him for being out during the daytime and feeding off scraps that many smaller animals would be grateful for, instead of hunting for his own food. Next he encounters a carrion crow who warns him that humans could be about. Bold ignores this warning as he sees nothing to fear from humans and in the following days he encounters several humans who do no harm to him at all, which increases his confidence.
A few weeks later, Bold discovers a game wood on some farmland and develops a taste for game birds (mainly partridges and pheasants). He sleeps in a badger set, but its owner soon arrives and wakes him up. Bold is friendly towards this female badger and she warns him about the humans in the area. Bold ignores this warning too and upon coming across a collection of animals killed by the gamekeeper kills and eats a bird in front of it as an act of defiance. However, a few days later he discovers the female badger in a snare. Though he manages to save her by biting through a wire, this wire snaps back and injures his eye. The badger is grateful and offers to help Bold whenever he may need her.
One day, Bold hears the sound of gunfire and discovers he has been caught in a pheasant shoot. When a dog comes towards him to get a dead pheasant, he tries to run away but runs towards the hunters because his bad eye prevents him from seeing them. One of the hunters then shoots him through the leg. Bold limps across the field with his injured leg dragging along the ground and eventually reaches a ditch where he is out of sight. Bold sees a dormouse nearby and tries to catch it, but is no longer nimble enough. Bold is unable to move far from the ditch and his diet consists mainly of slugs and insects he can find nearby. Unfortunately, those do not provide enough sustenance and Bold becomes very weak. He is found by the crow he met previously and Bold asks the bird for help, but the crow refuses until Bold tells him that his father is the famous Farthing Wood Fox. After this, the crow agrees to help him and heads off to find the badger that Bold helped. She eventually arrives with three of her kin and they feed Bold. One of the badger's offspring suggests that Bold should return to their set until he recovers.
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Wikipedia