A safe haven in wild west Cork

Damien Enright meets with Foxes of a very different kind

IF you walk on two legs and your name is Fox, there seems to be no good reason why you shouldn’t call some of your four legged friends Ozzie, Billy or Pepe. If you have three otters in your back garden, and occasionally in your house, it’s hard to call them simply Otter 1, Otter 2 and Otter 3. While you don’t want to cosy up too much — so that when they’re reared or healed, whichever, they can be released into the wild and survive — naming them doesn’t change them.

Six otters have, to date, found sanctuary and care in the Foxes’ garden. There are three in residence. A fourth, Pepe, weaned on the bottle and released at eight months old, almost 11 years ago, still turns up every few months, perhaps for a free lunch or, sometimes, when it is unwell. It appears, standing on its hind legs on the window sill, whistling and clawing at the glass. Mike and June Fox let it in and feed it and, if necessary, give it antibiotics. Afterwards, off it goes again to the river that runs near their house at the end of a secluded lane in west Cork.