Fantastic Mr Fox Read online

  Other books by Roald Dahl

  THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE

  ESIO TROT

  THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME

  THE MAGIC FINGER

  THE TWITS

  For older readers

  THE BFG

  BOY: TALES OF CHILDHOOD

  BOY and GOING SOLO

  CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

  CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR

  THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF CHARLIE AND MR WILLY WONKA DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD

  GEORGE'S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE

  GOING SOLO

  JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH

  MATILDA

  THE WITCHES

  Picture books

  DIRTY BEASTS (with Quentin Blake) THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE (with Quentin Blake) THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME (with Quentin Blake) THE MINPINS (with Patrick Benson) REVOLTING RHYMES (with Quentin Blake) Plays

  THE BFG: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: A PLAY (Adapted by Richard George) FANTASTIC MR FOX: A PLAY (Adapted by Sally Reid) JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH: A PLAY (Adapted by Richard George)

  THE TWITS: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) THE WITCHES: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) Teenage fiction

  THE GREAT AUTOMATIC GRAMMATIZATOR AND OTHER STORIES

  RHYME STEW

  SKIN AND OTHER STORIES

  THE VICAR OF NIBBLESWICKE

  THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR AND SIX MORE

  Roald Dahl

  Fantastic Mr Fox

  illustrated by

  Quentin Blake

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchshecl Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdec Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd. Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  puffinbooks.com

  First published by George Allen & Unwin 1970

  Published in Puffin Books 1974

  Reissued with new illustrations 1996

  This edition published 2007

  2

  Text copyright (c) Roald Dahl Nominee Ltd, 1970

  Illustrations copyright (c) Quentin Blake, 1996

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  Except in the United Slates of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-192984-2

  To Olivia

  Contents

  1 The Three Farmers

  2 Mr Fox

  3 The Shooting

  4 The Terrible Shovels

  5 The Terrible Tractors

  6 The Race

  7 'We'll Never Let Him Go'

  8 The Foxes Begin to Starve

  9 Mr Fox Has a Plan

  10 Boggis's Chicken House Number One

  11 A Surprise for Mrs Fox

  12 Badger

  13 Bunce's Giant Storehouse

  14 Badger Has Doubts

  15 Bean's Secret Cider Cellar

  16 The Woman

  17 The Great Feast

  18 Still Waiting

  1

  The Three Farmers

  Down in the valley there were three farms. The owners of these farms had done well. They were rich men. They were also nasty men. All three of them were about as nasty and mean as any men you could meet. Their names were Farmer Boggis, Farmer Bunce and Farmer Bean.

  Boggis was a chicken farmer. He kept thousands of chickens. He was enormously fat. This was because he ate three boiled chickens smothered with dumplings every day for breakfast, lunch and supper.

  Bunce was a duck-and-goose farmer. He kept thousands of ducks and geese. He was a kind of pot-bellied dwarf. He was so short his chin would have been underwater in the shallow end of any swimming-pool in the world. His food was doughnuts and goose-livers. He mashed the livers into a disgusting paste and then stuffed the paste into the doughnuts. This diet gave him a tummy-ache and a beastly temper.

  Bean was a turkey-and-apple farmer. He kept thousands of turkeys in an orchard full of apple trees. He never ate any food at all. Instead, he drank gallons of strong cider which he made from the apples in his orchard. He was as thin as a pencil and the cleverest of them all.

  'Boggis and Bunce and Bean

  One fat, one short, one lean.

  These horrible crooks

  So different in looks

  Were none the less equally mean.'

  That is what the children round about used to sing when they saw them.

  2

  Mr Fox

  On a hill above the valley there was a wood.

  In the wood there was a huge tree.

  Under the tree there was a hole.

  In the hole lived Mr Fox and Mrs Fox and their four Small Foxes.

  Every evening as soon as it got dark, Mr Fox would say to Mrs Fox, 'Well, my darling, what shall it be this time? A plump chicken from Boggis? A duck or a goose from Bunce? Or a nice turkey from Bean?' And when Mrs Fox had told him what she wanted, Mr Fox would creep down into the valley in the darkness of the night and help himself.

  Boggis and Bunce and Bean knew very well what was going on, and it made them wild with rage. They were not men who liked to give anything away. Less still did they like anything to be stolen from them. So every night each of them would take his shotgun and hide in a dark place somewhere on his own farm, hoping to catch the robber.

  But Mr Fox was too clever for them. He always approached a farm with the wind blowing in his face, and this meant that if any man were lurking in the shadows ahead, the wind would carry the smell of that man to Mr Fox's nose from far away. Thus, if Mr Boggis was hiding behind his Chicken House Number One, Mr Fox would smell him out from fifty yards off and quickly change direction, heading for Chicken House Number Four at the other end of the farm.

  'Dang and blast that lousy beast!' cried Boggis.

  'I'd like to rip his guts out!' said Bunce.

  'He must be killed!' cried Bean.

  'But how?' said Boggis. 'How on earth can we catch the blighter?'

  Bean picked his nose delicately with a long finger. 'I have a plan,' he said.

  'You've never had a decent plan yet,' said Bunce.

  'Shut up and listen,' said Bean. 'Tomorrow night we will all hide just outside the hole where the fox lives. We will wait there until he comes out. Then... Bang! Bang-bang-bang.'

  'Very clever,' said Bunce. 'But first we shall have to find the hole.'