Tiny Foxes Lynn Huggins-Cooper

Just lately, my study has started to fill up with tiny foxes. They have come creeping along the bookcases and curled up on the desk.

Foxes brought me my first writing success, when aged 4, I won a radio poetry competition with a fox who plagued a farmer. Today, I live next to a huge forest. I sleep in an attic bedroom, and leave the skylight open all year round – even in January! The sounds of owls and foxes lull me to sleep and I think they slide into my dreams.

My study has a large window that looks across a field into the forest, and I know the foxes are there, peering back at me from the trees.

The thing is, I sit in the study and write books, and make things from wool. Recently, these two ‘worlds’ of mine have started to meet in the middle. I write craft books, showing people how to make the things I teach in my classes. I write lots of other types of books, and the little creatures I make have started to creep into those, too.

The foxes have poked their pointy little snouts into the pages of my note books, and left paw prints full of stories.

They curl in and out of the jars on my cabinet, peering at the things inside. I hear them chatter and call to each other, and then they ruffle through the pages of the notebook again, bringing their ideas with them.