Photo: Brian Gavin
EVERY night without fail an animal-loving Limerick woman prepares a chicken supper for a very special caller before then going to her front door and whistling to let him know it’s ready.
Meet the Treaty City’s very own ‘Fantastic Mrs Fox’.
Jean Goodwin from Thomondgate, on the outskirts of the city centre, is a creature of habit. While most of us settle in for the night to watch the late evening news, she is cooking up a storm for her friendly neighbourhood fox.
The animal she fondly knows as ‘Foxy’ has been visiting her home every night for the past 12 months.
And why wouldn’t he? He is greeted to a delicious slap-up meal every time.
“He comes at the same time every night. I go out to the door and whistle and 10 minutes later he is here. He comes in the front door into the hallway and I give him a little feed of chicken or ham. If I don’t have that, I’ll cook four sausages for him,” Jean explains.
Jean adores animals and also shares her home with her pet dog, cat, budgie and hedgehog.
“The hedgehog has just gone into hibernation so I won’t see him now until next Spring. The funny thing is the fox is more nervous of my cat than she is of him. She is the more dominant one. They get on fine and often eat their meal together when he calls,” she tells me.
“The kids on the street love him too. He is a lovely thing. The men in the pub down the street get a great kick out of it as well. They think it’s great gas. They’d be outside the pub smoking and see Foxy passing every night. They get a great laugh from it because they know where he is off to. Then 10 minutes later he passes back up past the pub again with two chicken legs in his mouth.”
After a first course of little pieces of chicken or ham, Jean sends Foxy on his way each night with two chicken legs for its main course.
“He is well looked after and well liked. I know another man over in Kileely who feeds him too. If I were ever late home Foxy would be curled up outside the front gate waiting for me. He is here every night without fail. He comes in off the riverbank somewhere, walks down through Thomondgate and crosses over to my front door.
I don’t think of him as a pet. He is a lovely thing, but a wild thing. I never touch him. He must be about two years old now so one of these days he’ll take off. I will miss him when he’s gone but he is a wild animal and he will go and start his own family soon. He is a lovely sly fox,” says Jean.
by Alan Jacques