Makejo, a full-grown red fox, was born on the marshy shores of James Bay. Originally, he belonged to a litter of six pups which a Cree Indian had dug up in the spring and given to our trader at Moose Factory. The pups were still blind and helpless when they reached human hands. They took kindly to the bottle, but the mixture of condensed milk and plain water on which our man tried to raise them proved a failure. One little fox alone survived the ordeal. That was Makejo.
Although undersized and weak at first, he grew amazingly fast soon after he was weaned. When I saw him two years later he was larger and heavier than any fox of that region. Blood red, with a mask fringed with black and a large white tip at the end of his brush, he was as tame as a dog and as mischevious as a monkey.
He lived in the trader’s house, slept in a box, and came instantly at the call of his name. He was a great mouser. Now and again the trader would lock him up in the storeroom at night where he would kill dozens of mice, which he would invariably eat—barring the tails.