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1 ROALD DAHLF antasticMr. FoxILLUSTRATED BYQUENTIN BLAKEPUFFIN Three FarmersDOWN IN THE 'VALLEY there were three farms. Theowners of these farms had done well. They wererich men. They were also nasty men. All three ofthem were about as nasty and mean as any menyou could meet. Their names were Farmer Boggis,Farmer Bunce and Farmer was a chicken farmer. He kept thousandsof chickens. He was enormously fat. This was be-cause he ate three boiled chickens smothered withdumplings every day for breakfast, lunch and >r>Bunce was a duck-and-goose farmer. He keptthousands of ducks and geese. He was a kind of pot-bellied dwarf. He was so short his chin wouldhave been under water in the shallow end of anyswimming-pool in the world. His food was dough-nuts and goose livers. He mashed the livers into adisgusting paste and then stuffed the paste into thedoughnuts. This diet gave him a tummy-ache and abeastly 3 Boggis and Bunce and BeanOne fat, one short, one horrible crooksSo different in looksWere nonetheless equally is what the children round about used tolei sing when they saw was a turkey-and-apple farmer.

2 He kept thou-sands of turkeys in an orchard full of apple trees. Henever ate any food at all. Instead, he drank gallons ofstrong cider which he made from the apples in hisorchard. He was as thin as a pencil and the cleverestof them FoxON A 11111, above the valley there was a the wood there was a huge the tree there was a the hole lived Mr. Fox and Mrs. Fox and theirfour Small evening as soon as it got dark, Mr. Foxwould say to Mrs. Fox, "Well, my darling, what shall itbe this time? A plump chicken from Boggis? A duckor a goose from Bunce? Or a nice turkey from Bean?"And when Mrs. Fox had told him what she wanted,Mr. Fox would creep down into the valley in thedarkness of the night and help himself.)7 Boggis and Bunce and Bean knew very well whatwas going on, and it made them wild with rage. Theywere not men who liked to give anything away. Lessstill did they like anything to be stolen from every night each of them would take his shotgunand hide in a dark place somewhere on his ownfarm, hoping to catch the Mr.

3 Fox was too clever for them. He alwaysapproached a farm with the wind blowing in hisface, and this meant that if any man were lurking inthe shadows ahead, the wind would carry the smellof that man to Mr. Fox's nose from far away. Thus,if Mr. Boggis was hiding behind his Chicken HouseNumber One, Mr. Fox would smell him out fromfifty yards off and quickly change direction, headingfor Chicken House Number Four at the other end ofthe farm."Dang and blast that lousy beast!" cried ).>"I'd like to rip his guts out!" said Bunce."He must be killed!" cried Bean."But how?" said Boggis. "How on earth can wecatch the blighter?"Bean picked his nose delicately with a long finger."I have a plan," he said."You've never had a decent plan yet," said Bunce."Shut up and listen," said Bean. "Tomorrow nightwe will all hide just outside the hole where the foxlives. We will wait there until he comes out. ! Bang-bang-bang.""Very clever," said Bunce.

4 "But first we shall haveto find the hole.""My dear Bunce, I've already found it," said thecrafty Bean. "It's up in the wood on the hill. It's undera huge tree .." 916 163 The Shooting"WELL, MY DARLING," said Mr. Fox. "What shall it betonight?""I think we'll have duck tonight," said Mrs. Fox."Bring us two fat ducks, if you please. One for youand me, and one for the children.""Ducks it shall be!" said Mr. Fox. "Bunce's best!""Now do be careful," said Mrs. Fox."My darling," said Mr. Fox, "I can smell those goonsa mile away. I can even smell one from the gives off a filthy stink of rotten reeks of goose-livers, and as for Bean, thefumes of apple cider hang around him like poison-ous gases.""Yes, but just don't get careless," said Mrs. Fox. Youknow they'll be waiting for you, all three of them.""Don't you worry about me," said Mr. Fox. "I'll seeyou later."But Mr. Fox would not have been quite so cockyhad he known exactly where the three farmers werewaiting at that moment.

5 They were just outside theentrance to the hole, each one crouching behind atree with his gun loaded. And what is more, they hadchosen their positions very carefully making surethat the wind was not blowing from them towardsthe fox's hole. In fact, it was blowing in the oppositedirection. There was no chance of them being"smelled out."Mr. Fox crept up the dark tunnel to the mouth ofhis hole. He poked his long handsome face out intothe night air and sniffed moved an inch or two forward and sniffed again. He was always especially carefulwhen coming out from his inched forward a little more. The front half ofhis body was now in the black nose twitched from side to side, sniffingand sniffing for the scent of danger. He found none,and he was just about to go trotting forward into thewood when he heard or thought he heard a tiny noise,a soft rustling sound, as though someone had moved afoot ever so gently through a patch of dry Fox flattened his body against the ground andlay very still, his ears pricked.

6 He waited a long time,but he heard nothing more."It must have been a field-mouse," he told himself,"or some other small animal."He crept a little further out of the hole .. thenfurther still. He was almost right out in the opennow He took a last careful look around. The woodwas murky and very still. Somewhere in the sky themoon was then, his sharp night-eyes caught a glint ofsomething bright behind a tree not far away. It wasa small silver speck of moonlight shining on apolished surface. Mr. Fox lay still, watching it. Whaton earth was it? Now it was moving. It was comingup and up .. Great heavens! It was the barrel ofa gun! Quick as a whip, Mr. Fox jumped back intohis hole and at that same instant the entire woodseemed to explode around him. Bang-bang! Bang-bang! Bang-bang! 12$4,The smoke from the three guns floated upwardin the night air. Boggis and Bunce and Bean cameout from behind their trees and walked towardsthe hole.

7 "Did we get him?" said of them shone a flashlight on the hole, andthere on the ground, in the circle of light, half in andhalf out of the hole, lay the poor tattered blood-stained remains of .. a fox's tail. Bean picked it up."We got the tail but we missed the fox," he said, toss-ing the thing away13"Dang and blast!" said Boggis. "We shot too should have let fly the moment he poked hishead out.""He won't be poking it out again in a hurry,"Bunce pulled a flask from his pocket and took aswig of cider. Then he said, "It'll take three days atleast before he gets hungry enough to come outagain. I'm not sitting around here waiting for 's dig him out.""Ah," said Boggis. "Now you're talking sense. Wecan dig him out in a couple of hours. We know he'sthere.""I reckon there's a whole family of them downthat hole," Bunce said."Then we'll have the lot," said Bean. "Get theshovels!"<4 144 The Terrible ShovelsDowN THE HOLE, Mrs.

8 Fox was tenderly licking thestump of Mr. Fox's tail to stop the bleeding. "It wasthe finest tail for miles around," she said betweenlicks."It hurts," said Mr. Fox."I know it does, sweetheart. But it'll soon getbetter.""And it will soon grow again, Dad," said one of theSmall Foxes."It will never grow again," said Mr. Fox. "I shall betail-less for the rest of my life." He looked very to,There was no food for the foxes that night, andsoon the children dozed off. Then Mrs. Fox dozedoff. But Mr. Fox couldn't sleep because of the pain inthe stump of his tail. "Well," he thought, "I supposeI'm lucky to be alive at all. And now they've foundour hole, we're going to have to move out as soon aspossible. We'll never get any peace if we .. What wasthat?" He turned his head sharply and listened. Thenoise he heard now was the most frightening noisea fox can ever hear the scrape-scrape-scraping ofshovels digging into the soil.

9 "Wake up!" he shouted. "They're digging us out!"Mrs. Fox was wide awake in one second. She satup, quivering all over. "Are you sure that's it?" shewhispered."I'm positive! Listen!""They'll kill my children!" cried Mrs. Fox."Never!" said Mr. Fox."But darling, they will!"sobbed Mrs. Fox. "Youknow they will!"Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch went the shovelsabove their heads. Small stones and bits of earthbegan falling from the roof of the tunnel."How will they kill us, Mummy?" asked one of theSmall Foxes. His round black eyes were huge withfright. "Will there he dogs?" he Fox began to cry. She gathered her four chil-dren close to her and held them there was an especially loud crunchabove their heads and the sharp end of a shovelcame right through the ceiling. The sight of this16 <4178, 8,Oawful thing seemed to have an electric effect uponMr. Fox. He jumped up and shouted, "I've got it!Come on! There's not a moment to lose!

10 Why didn'tI think of it before!""Think of what, Dad?""A fox can dig quicker than a man!" shouted , beginning to dig. "Nobody in the world can digas quick as a fox!"The soil began to fly out furiously behind Mr. Foxas he started to dig for dear life with his front Fox ran forward to help him. So did the fourchildren."Go downwards!" ordered Mr. Fox. "We've got togo deep! As deep as we possibly can!"The tunnel began to grow longer and sloped steeply downward. Deeper and deeperbelow the surface of the ground it went. The moth-er and the father and all four of the children weredigging together. Their front legs were movingso fast you couldn't see them. And gradually thescrunching and scraping of the shovels becamefainter and about an hour, Mr. Fox stopped digging."Hold it!" he said. They all stopped. They turnedand looked back up the long tunnel they had justdug. All was quiet. "Phew!" said Mr. Fox. "I thinkwe've done it!