The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Dear Friends,

I was browsing the imdb.com site this morning to see what I could see regarding Wes Anderson's new movie "The Darjeerling Express" and happened to see that he is also working on a stop-motion "Fantastic Mr. Fox" movie. This is truly exciting. A great many of Mr. Dahl's books have been made into movies lately (Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Witches, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) but none have excited me as much as this one. The Fantastic Mr. Fox book ranks right up there with Danny the Champion of the World in my esteem and is a story that I will happily sit in a theater crowded with nine-year-olds to enjoy.

I enjoy duck hunting (I hesitate to dub myself "avid") and have hunted one type of animal or another for most of my life. I have no qualms with hunting animals that are born prey. Humans are as much a part of the eco-cycle as any other animal and need to understand that as we expand into suburban and rural areas, it is our duty to fill in for the predators we have driven out. The movie Bambi upsets me because it is little more than anti-hunting propaganda. How is it then that Mr. Fox is one of my favorites?

Stories like The Fox and the Hound and The Fantastic Mr. Fox are seen as anti-hunting stories and in many ways they are. The significant difference between these stories and stories like Bambi is the nature of the creature being hunted. I am one of the few people I know (Do I really know myself?) to discriminate between hunting for prey specifically and hunting in general. In many ways, I think humans relate more to predators than we do prey. There is more humanity present in a wolf or a bear for instance than in a duck or a deer. Understandably, the softer hearts among us would agree to killing an attacking bear before killing a mallard on the wing, but this is faulty logic.

I try very hard to be an environmentalist. It is difficult in this day and age to have a positive impact on the natural world. Recycling is not as convenient as it should be, I rely on ozone-depleting air-conditioning for comfort and I am not in a position to walk to work or to afford a hybrid vehicle. That said, I do what I can. I use as little water as I have to, I replace my old bulbs with CFLs and act as a predator in the place of the predators other humans have driven from their habitats by moving to newly-built homes in the suburbs rather than buying perfectly good old homes in the city.

Prey need to be killed; predators need to be protected. Predators in the wild steer clear from one another or, if they interact, know their roles and respect each other. Hunting for bears and foxes is as environmentally irresponsible as not hunting for squirrels and deer. While I hope that the children reading Fantastic Mr. Fox understand this, I fear that they will not. Ducks Unlimited and groups of its nature do what they can to educate children about the virtues of hunting, but most children have already been indoctrinated by sappy, thoughtless movies like Bambi and Open Season and will not give hunting advocates a chance to get their message across.

Here is my point: The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a wonderful book because it exhalts the humanity present in predators like the fox. Humans who understand that we are predators are generally far better stewards of the earth than those who think we are prey.

-LCC