Fox In The Hen House Quotes

Never let a friendly fox into your hen-house. One day he's going to get hungry.

That it was a wolf was somewhat comforting. Wolves talked occasionally. So did bears. Foxes talked all the time, particularly if you caught them in the hen house, where they would do their best to addle you with fine nonsense until they could slip out the door, and it was generally believed that all cats could talk and simply refused to do so for inscrutable reasons of their own. 

And that fox escaped with his tail between his legs, with all of the hens chasing after him

The ego camouflages itself like a fox born and raised in a hen house. Its only worry is that you fail to notice its presence every so often and start acting without fear

his hands moved busily among the puppets, choosing, discarding, until they pounced finally on the moon with her crystal eyes and her hands shaped like stars. 'I will be the moon,' Kyel said. 'You must make a wish to me.' Lydea slid her fingers into the fox's head, with its sly smile and fiery velvet pelt. 'I wish,' she said, 'that you would take your nap.' 'No,' the prince said patiently, 'you must make a true wish. And I will grant it because I am the moon.' 'Then I must make a fox's wish. I wish for an open door to every hen house, and the ability to jump into trees.' The moon sank onto the blue hillock of Kyel's knee. 'Why?' 'So that I can escape the farmer's dogs when they run after me.' 'Then you should wish,' the prince said promptly, 'that you could jump as high as the moon.' 'A good wish. But there are no hens on the moon, and how would I get back to Ombria?' The moon rose again, lifted a golden hand. 'On a star.' The governess smiled. The fox stroked the prince's hair while he shook away the moon and replaced it with the sorceress, who had one amethyst eye and one emerald, and who wore a black cloak that shimmered with ribbons of faint, changing colors. 'I am the sorceress who lives underground,' the prince said. 'Is there really a sorceress who lives underground?' 'So they --' Lydea checked herself, let the fox speak. 'So they say, my lord.' 'How does she live? Does she have a house?' She paused again, glimpsing a barely remembered tale. 'I think she does. Maybe even her own city beneath Ombria. Some say that she has an ancient enemy, who appears during harsh and perilous times in Ombria's history. Then and only then does the sorceress make her way out of her underground world to fight the evil and restore hope to Ombria.' ... The sorceress descended, long nose down on the silk. Kyel picked another puppet up, looked at it silently a moment. The queen of pirates, whose black nails curved like scimitars, whose hair was a rigid knoll in which she kept her weapons, stared back at him out of glittering onyx eyes.

Prince Edward’s cunning smile reminded Anastasia of a fox who had wormed his way into a hen house.

Never let a friendly fox into your hen-house. One day he’s going to get hungry.

We hear them often in the night. Their wild yelping makes the hair on my neck rise, even as I am always compelled to go to the nearest window and fling it open to listen, despite the cold. You can hear them moving: nearer, nearer up the frozen creek bed, until they are just beyond the edge of the porch light, the moon a grinning wedge above the trees. And then they’re gone, racing up the valley into the dark. I can feel how they’re close now, beyond the meadow’s edge, somewhere in the woods there, maybe asleep or watching us with yellow eyes, alerted by our footsteps and the sharp, ringing singsong of my son’s eager voice. This is always the case: The line between us and the wild is slender, like the bit of thread I find coiled in my pocket. My fingers tease it, wanting to know how it’s wound. This is always the way. I always want to know. The thread is yellow and snarled and comes from the windowsill of the bedroom above the garage. I stuck it in my pocket this morning while tidying, meaning to throw it away. It was from tha same window that I saw the foxes last week. The ruckus of the chickens alerted me, and when I looked down, one was right below me in the snowy driveway, looking up. I pounded my fist on the glass and began to yell, but it didn’t run. Instead it just stared at me, not moving a muscle until I ran down and out into the snow without a hat or gloves or jacket, boots unlaced, shrieking like a madwoman. Of course it ran then, though not far at first—just to the top of the nearest field—and when I followed after, another joined it. They’d staked the chicken house out for sure. And even though they were a threat to our unwitting hens, I was sad when they disappeared among the white trunks of a stand of birches, and I can still feel the way my heart was hammering hard and raw in my chest after running through the snow, hair flyaway, clapping my hands. Their fur was rust-colored, and when they ran