At the bottom of our garden is a high and sturdy old wall shaded by trees. Along with our neighbours' garden walls, similarly old, it provides a useful off-road network for local wildlife: squirrels, cats, and foxes. My study overlooks it and sometimes, when computer screen or blank paper fails to fascinate, it provides passing interest as animals come and go.
The squirrels need not concern us. They are wary and fast and do not linger under threat. A cat, a large ginger tom, does his rounds at dawn and dusk: menacing and imperturbable, checking the boundaries of his territory for lesser cats. Foxes I see less often. Mainly nocturnal, they are relative newcomers to the life of the suburb, but hungrier and more assertive since our local authority substituted wheelie bins for the black rubbish bags from which they once made a messy living.
One morning last spring—daffodils doing well, weeds doing better, grass almost needing cutting—the wall offered a small, strange drama. The cat was making his rounds, proceeding from left to right on routine patrol, when he paused, not menacing but cautious, staring along the wall at whatever was coming from the right. A big fox—relaxed and confident—emerged and strolled towards him, first briefly hesitating then advancing confidently, as one who expects to have right of way.
For a tiny moment there was uncertainty, then the normally imperturbable ginger tom turned and ran. The fox continued on his way. Watching, I wished him well, and assumed that to be the end of the matter.
Suddenly a silent drama became very noisy. Our neighbours over the wall have a couple of dogs, an alsatian and a labrador, not normally out in the early morning, but happening to be so that day. Seeing, and presumably scenting, the fox, they leapt at the wall and at him, barking ferociously. He paused, then retreated even faster than the cat.
But what, you might ask, has any of this got to do with medicine? Let me try to explain. Mammals, it appears, are programmed to manage confrontation largely without bloodshed. And if you don't believe me, just watch carefully in the hospital of your choice: corridor behaviour; committee behaviour; and, perhaps most conspicuously, surgical ward round behaviour. But—assuming you're not top dog—you should perhaps mind how you go.