Tim Dowling: who is the secret admirer leaving gifts for the dog? | Family

After weeks without rain, the garden has turned a uniform beige. Whole shrubs have perished in the unrelenting heat, their crisp brown leaves disintegrating in the breeze. In the middle of the scorched lawn lies the prone body of a large dead bird.

On closer inspection, it appears to be a stuffed toy fashioned into the form of a limp duck carcass. When I open the back door for a closer look, the dog steps out between my legs, picks up the bird and carries it inside. It was clearly made with dogs in mind.

“What is that?” my wife says as she walks into the room with a shoe in each hand.

“I think it’s a duck,” I say.

“I’ve never seen it before,” she says, sitting on the sofa. The dog climbs up and sits next to her, duck in mouth.

“Me neither,” I say. “But it’s clearly not new.”

The dog begins to pull one of the wings off the duck with a sharp tearing sound.

“Not in here!” my wife says. “Take your duck outside.” The dog climbs down, walks out of the door, and sits down on the grass to dismember the duck.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” my wife says. “Don’t forget it’s haircuts.”

My wife means that today is our standing appointment with Kelly, the hairdresser who is coming to the house to do three haircuts: me, my wife and the middle one. The oldest one stayed the night and is somewhere upstairs asleep, but he’s too out of sync with the haircut cycle to join in.

When Kelly arrives it is determined that I will go first. I wash my hair, as instructed, with washing-up liquid, standing at the kitchen sink with my head bent under the running tap.

I put a towel around my shoulders and sit down. While Kelly cuts we chat about the heat, the drought, the scorched, unsalvageable garden.

“What’s all that white stuff out there?” Kelly says, looking out the window at the lawn.

“That,” I say, “is the inside of a duck.” Further down the lawn, the dog is methodically eviscerating the toy, throwing bits of the stuffing into the air with a flick of her head and watching them float off on the breeze.

“I still have no idea where that duck came from,” my wife says.

“Dog toy, is it?” says Kelly.

“It was in the garden this morning,” I say. “Maybe someone threw it over the wall.”

“Or maybe the fox left it,” she says. “Do they do that sort of thing?”

I think back to two nights before, when I switched on the garden light to find the fox standing at the back door, looking in.

“Do foxes give stuffed toys as gifts?” I say. “Is that your question?”

Later I have trouble sleeping, preoccupied as I am by the idea of strangers leaving presents for my dog in the night. I’m much more at ease with the idea of foxes bearing gifts.

The next morning, the dog wakes me at six with a heavy paw on my chest to let me know she has pressing business in the garden. With the dog crowding me on the stairs, I stagger down to unlock the back door. There on the lawn, where the disembowelled duck lay the day before, sits a pair of outsized headphones made entirely of shaggy brown fur.

I open the door. The dog runs out, grabs the headphones and brings them inside.

“Where did she find those?” my wife asks later that morning, while the dog gnaws on the headphones in the middle of the kitchen floor.

“They were just there when I woke up,” I say. “Meanwhile, all the duck toy stuffing had mysteriously disappeared.”

“It didn’t disappear,” she says. “I cleaned it up.”

“Did you leave giant furry headphones in its place?”

“No,” she says. “What kind of stupid toy is that for a dog?”

“They’re not for dogs,” I say.

“What do you mean?” she says.

“I looked up the company on the tag,” I say. “They’re actual headphones, for people. Bluetooth.”

“In that case, should she be chewing them up?”

“I don’t want them,” I say. “Do you?”

“I meant because of the wires, or whatever else is inside,” she says. “Hello? Are you even listening?”

I am not listening. I am imagining a fox in its cosy den, surrounded by plush toys of every size and description, stolen from bedrooms with windows open to the hot night air, and carefully deciding which one to bestow next.