Beware the cunning fox. According to evolutionary biologists, the rural red fox (Vulpes vulpes) has been steadily, stealthily begging her way into our home and hearth for nearly a century now. It wasn’t until this year, though, that I actually found one on my doorstep.
It was about 11 o’clock on a fine spring night when a crashing noise out front alerted me to the visitor. I was inside, with the curtains drawn, watching the 1989 Kevin Costner-starring film Field of Dreams, while my family slept upstairs. Have you seen the 1989 Kevin Costner-starring film Field of Dreams? It’s about Ray (Costner), an Iowa farmer, who staves off mid-life ennui, fear of mortality and unresolved feelings of guilt towards his dead father, by mowing down his profitable cornfield and building in its stead a baseball field for ghosts.
Everyone tells Ray he’s lost it; that he’ll go bankrupt, his wife will leave him and take the kid, but this man has an unshakable faith, summed up by the film’s most famous line: “If you build it, he will come.” Good film, that Field of Dreams. And maybe, too, there’s something of the doggedly optimistic, “If-you-build-it-he-will-come” attitude in the foxes’ plot to get in good with us humans?
It was right at that point in the film when the ghost of Archie “Moonlight” Graham (Burt Lancaster) is finally stepping up to bat, after wasting his life and sporting promise as a much-beloved small-town doctor, when I heard that crashing sound. I hit pause on Field of Dreams and opened the front door to a Patio of Nightmares: my window box, upturned and smashed; soil and geraniums strewn all over, and there, lying across my welcome mat, in a gruesome parody of inter-species friendship, was the bloody corpse of an adult fox. The sound of feral teen laughter floating off into the night air offered the only clue as to what had happened.
Sadly not everyone is as alert to the foxes’ stratagems as I have now become
What now? Was my home being marked as a future target for young Satanists? Was this a warning to repent my urban ways and respect the awesome power of Mother Nature? After fly-tipping the remains in an undisclosed location (Sorry to Newham Council, but have you ever tried to dispose of a body before the school-run?), I settled instead on these two take-away truths: 1) Broken Britain needs to bring back the youth clubs, and 2) There are more foxes about than there used to be.
Scientists attribute this latter point to a process known as “self-domestication”. There isn’t total consensus on the cause, but one widespread theory suggests that as human cities have expanded and encroached on rural habitats, foxes have adapted by becoming more tame. Zoologists define “tameness” as an animal’s tolerance of humans in close proximity. Or, in the human species, a tolerance of other humans in close proximity, as evidenced by, say, choosing to stay at home of an evening and watch a Kevin Costner film, instead of going out on the prowl with the rest of your pack.
Foxes are likewise tiring of the nightlife. As with those adult children who move back in with their parents after a few years of paying sky-high London rents on gutter-low salaries, foxes are sick of living by their wits and fending for themselves. They want in on the cushy lifestyle of the pet dog or cat. The short game might be to bury Dixy Fried Chicken in your flower bed, but the long game is to snuggle up beside you in your marital bed.
Sadly not everyone is as alert to the foxes’ stratagems as I have now become. About 20 minutes up the North Circular, in my mum’s more gentrified London suburb, humans still have the upper hand in the vulpine-sapien power struggle and a certain complacency has set in. Would I look in on the house, my mum asked, while she was away on holiday? Sure. Would I water the plants and feed the cat? Of course. And would I also put some food out for the fox family that frequents her back garden, along with their mange medication from the vet? Absolutely not.
My principled stand, however heroic, is a lonely one. I’m yet to hear of any London households officially keeping a fox as a pet, but the foxes make regular, unopposed incursions and have long since won the air war of propaganda. Three of my children’s classmates are named “Fox” (“Fox” is to the little bourgeois boy babies of 2024 as “Jack” was in 1994); a local community mural has been unveiled, of a Disney-eyed fox staring wistfully at a butterfly; and everyone now knows the source of those once-mysterious strangled screams you hear at night. It’s not someone being murdered. Well, it might be. But it’s also the foxes’ obnoxiously loud mating call, a reminder that they’re having more sex than the rest of us.
A glance in the mirror reassures me my ears are as firm as ever and likewise my strong, virile jaw
Not for long, though. According to Dmitry Belyayev, the Soviet geneticist whose decades-long experiment studied domestication in a group of silver foxes, tameness is only the first stage in the process. Next comes the gradual occurrence of corresponding biological changes, such as “reduced sexual dimorphism” (becoming less sexually attractive), floppier ears and smaller jaws. A glance in the mirror reassures me my ears are as firm as ever and likewise my strong, virile jaw, but worryingly, another of Belyayev’s tell-tale signs, “fur depigmentation”, is evident in grey patches around my temples. Arguably, I’m also showing “unique coat colours and patterns”, having started to dress more like a CBeebies presenter, in primary-coloured jumpsuits and “fun” knitwear, ever since the birth of my first child.
Perhaps the smart move here is to stop fighting it and make peace, not only with the foxes’ domestication, but also with my own. I could do that. Or—hear me out—I could mow down my mum’s hollyhocks and convert her garden into a fox-sized baseball field in the hopes of attracting their ghosts to replay the 1919 World Series. People will think I’ve lost it, but then, didn’t they say the same thing about Kevin Costner?
Originally published on Esquire UK
We all know about bees, and how they're a keystone species because of the vital role they play in pollination. We also know about the disastrous consequences if they were to stop pollinating plants (shoutout Barry, I loved Bee Movie).
But let's talk about rhinos for a moment because they just don't get the attention they deserve. As a fellow keystone species, they play a crucial role in the structure and foundation of our ecosystem. Their presence alone supports biodiversity, promotes ecosystem health, and maintains balance. For example, every time a rhino rolls around in mud, it creates a natural waterhole that other animals rely on for drinking. Every time they feed on large amounts of grass, it helps prevent overgrowth, allowing smaller animals to feed. It also simultaneously reduces the risk of wildfires as dry grass can become fuel if left unchecked. You see the point—letting this species go extinct would be catastrophic.
This is where SORAI steps in. Otherwise known as Save Our Rhinos Africa and India, SORAI is a rhino conservation organisation founded by former international cricketer and Hublot ambassador Kevin Pietersen. As a "socially conscious enterprise", their aim is to bring people and businesses together to build a more sustainable approach to conservation. Since 2018, they've supported grassroots organisations that rescue abandoned, injured, and orphaned endangered species and rehabilitate them where possible.
Hublot recognises the importance of rhino conservation, so they're getting in on the action. They're partnering with SORAI once again to release the Spirit of Big Bang SORAI, a 30-piece limited-edition of the iconic tonneau-shaped hand-wound tourbillon. As the fourth collaborative watch between both entities, part of the proceeds from the watch's sales will be donated to the organisation as it continues fighting to protect the rhinos.
We catch up with Pietersen to learn more about SORAI's efforts, the story behind the new watch, and how the rest of us can pitch in to help these mystical beasts stick around for a few more millennia.
ESQUIRE SINGAPORE: SORAI has been making strides in rhino conservation since its inception, can you share a significant moment that ignited your commitment to found this organisation?
KEVIN PIETERSEN: There wasn’t a singular moment but it was just a generic continuation of all the conservation and awareness that I have been doing since 2013, because it was 2018 when SORAI started and when I launched the brand and thought of the brand, so it was just a stepping stone in a direction where we thought that we need to up our game in making sure that we continue to raise awareness and significant sums of money and get more people involved.
ESQ: Can you tell us about the most significant achievements of SORAI since its inception?
KP: Significant achievements so far, I don’t want to talk about SORAI, I don’t want to talk about Hublot. What I want to talk about is the fact that rhino poaching seems to be on the decline at the moment which is exactly why we started doing what we are doing and exactly why we are sitting here now, because of the incredible sums of money that has been raised, because of the targeted direction of where those funds go.
We’ve been very specific on what we spend our money on because we know that if you are specific and you work with trusted organisations and you funnel all the money in the right way, you will make a difference. If you just shoot a lot of money into the air and think, “Hey guys, go and enjoy yourselves” then that’s where you become stuck, especially in a country like South Africa. We have been very targeted on technology, on running the sanctuary, on education and kids. We’ve seen lots of success and when you talk about the rhino numbers coming down it makes you smile.
ESQ: What do you want the buyers of this watch to feel or understand about their purchase?
KP: The togetherness, the unity and the people. This is about the people, this is really about the men and women, the boys and girls that live in the area and are part of a huge responsibility in looking after a keystone species.
ESQ: How the proceeds of this watch allocated within SORAI’s initiatives?
KP: It’s for the people, education and technology. The first edition was for “Care for Wild”, that’s why this is so important because of the ability it gives us with the US dollar to convert it into Rands and US dollars goes a long way when it comes to Rands.
ESQ: How can everyday people contribute to the rhino conservation?
KP: We recently set up a SORAI Rangers Program which comes from the need to build a human fence. Everybody around the world can in some way shape a form and feel they can make a difference. So we set up a subscription program where people can subscribe for as little as one pound a month and they can feel like they are a part of the human fence no matter where they live and that goes at an incredibly long way in helping us protect these keystone species.
