The Red Fox and Johnny Valentine's Blue-Speckled Hound

A great story of a boy named Johnny Valentine with his unusual hound pup and a special friend named Tennessee. The hero of the story is a certain red fox, who creates his own personal territory along the riverin Big Hollow. There he marauds among the local farms, creeping and drifting along under cover of darkness to steal chickens, avoid the boys of the neighborhood, acquire a mate, and outrace and outsmart the hounds that the local farmers sometimes set upon his trail. Surprising things happen to the fox and the hound, and to Johny Valentine and Tennessee. Yet they arise out of everyday episodes in the life of a farm country fox, and the lives of the hounds and people that pursue him and become familiar with his beauty and agility, his phantom-like wiliness, and his unpredictability. The author lived his own version of a child's adventurous life with foxes, while also soaking up the fox stories of older neighbors and relatives. The first 50 years of his adult life were spent as an academic biologist, trying to understand the behavior of animals and humans. Check out many other books by the author like, "Thumping on Trees," "Playin' Cowboy," and "Teaching Yourself to Train Your Horse."