Colour tattoo of a stylised red fox with bold black outlines, a swirling tail and dots, on a lower leg.

Stylised fox tattoo on a calf

Neo-trad · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A stylised red fox sits upright, facing left, with green eyes, whiskers and a bushy tail that curls into a black swirl at the bottom. The fox is filled with orange, rust and white shading and outlined in bold black linework, with a black stylised flourish and dots beside it. The design is set against a plain skin background and a textured fabric surface.

Neo-trad Calf Fox Tail Swirl Dot Whiskers

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fox came down off the spoil heap the week after the cage stopped, and it sat on the wash-house step as though it had paid for the seat. My mam said foxes brought bad luck to a colliery row, and she shooed it with a wet tea towel. It didn't run. It only turned its green eyes on her, whiskers out stiff as the wires on the pit head, and waited until she went inside.

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My brother Tom was on the night shift in the Low Main when the roof came in at the far end. Every morning after that there were three black dots on the step, as neat as thumbprints, and beside them a curl of cinder shaped like the end of a tail. The men at the lamp room said it was only a fox after scraps. Nobody else looked at the marks the way I did, counting them in the grey light before the hooter went.

On the ninth morning the fox trotted ahead of me up the heap, its brush sweeping the clinker behind it, stopping every few yards to make sure I was still coming. At the top there was a crack in the shale where warm air breathed out and smelt of struck matches. The fox put one paw on the edge and tapped, twice, then once. I ran for Mr Hebden with his lamp and his shovel, and the rescue men dug until their hands bled. They found Tom and four others sitting in a dry pocket, singing hymns to keep the dark away.

The fox was gone by the next morning, but the three dots are still on our step, scrubbed and scrubbed and never quite gone. Mam leaves a saucer of milk there every night. She says it isn't for the fox.