Displaced in Mullingar: Stuffed or windy, arthritic or intuitive - foxes make their past and presence felt, writes Michael Harding

There was a teacher in my school who had a discreet way of coping with windy little boys in his class - those who ate too much cabbage and suffered bouts of flatulence. Whenever someone emitted a wind as obvious as rotten eggs, or as loud as a car horn, he would turn his head towards the window, sniff the air, and ask, "Was that a fox?" I grew up believing that foxes did an inordinate amount of farting.

And there was an old man who lived behind the golf links who had a stuffed fox inside his door. He had a donkey and cart, and we rode to town with him occasionally during summer. He would park the cart in the yard behind McGinnity's Bar, go for his pension, and have a drink of stout. On the way home we would take the reins.

"Come in," he would say, when we got as far as his gate, "and see my fox." I ate a lot of currant bread in that house, and drank mugs of tea, and wondered at the old man's missing fingers.

The stuffed fox on the sideboard seemed angry and arthritic, but at least he didn't break wind.

Foxes were scarce in those days. The story was that their tail was worth £5, if it was presented to the gardaí. Why the gardaí should offer money for a fox's tail was a mystery to us; but believing such things helped demonise the fox in our childhood imaginations.

I was in my late 20s when I first heard tell of a fox walking down a snow-covered street. It was in Derrylin, in a winter when the hills were white, and the lake shore was invaded by a colony of swans. The fox was identified one morning by his footprints, behind the hotel.

The next night I stayed up, and the fox came and we looked at each other by moonlight, outside a greenhouse of dead tomatoes. Being a cat lover, I was instantly seduced by the antics of the beast, his beautiful eyes, and his face both friendly and feral, ready to kill or make love in an instant. He gazed at me intently, as if he wanted me to open the door for him.

Last week the same old fox appeared in my dreams. Still in the snow, and still staring at me, though in the interim years he had learned to talk.

His tail swept a dust of snow into the air.

He posed me a riddle.

"What do you call a male swan?"

I couldn't speak.

"A cob!"

It wasn't that I was silent and he could talk that astonished me. It was the fact that he spoke with a Westmeath accent.

"What do you call the other one?" Still my tongue was tied.

"A pen," said the fox. "A pen. You should know that, if you're a writer." But it was only a dream.

During the recent building boom the fox has been displaced from his ancient habitat, and often takes refuge in the town.

Now that it's nearly Christmas, he comes, with his libido high, to the back doors. Even in the dusk, he comes to the garden deck, sniffing for vixens, and eating what he can from the dog's bowl.

He wanders in the dead of night through the suburbs of Mullingar; through Lynn and Ballinderry, looking for patio windows, to admire himself before his courtship, or scavenging in plastic refuse bags to fill his tummy, or just to play on the children's trampoline.

I don't know if he has yet ventured to the restaurants on Dominic Street, or the refuse skips near the apartment blocks. But at least he's relatively safe in town.

I knew a person in rural Ireland who had a donkey that suffered all winter without being shod. The hoof grew and curled until the leg broke.

I knew a man who kept horses in a field surrounded by barbed wire during winter, and the thin layer of soil couldn't stand much hoofing, so the field became a bath of mud, and the horse got thinner and thinner as its feet rotted.

Rural Ireland is full of galloping horses and hounds that hunt. At least in the back streets of Mullingar, brother fox cannot be dug out of his den, tied with a rope, dragged by his legs, swung in the air, or tossed to a pack of dogs to be eaten alive. I suppose that's something for which he should be grateful.