High-pitched shrieking shattered the mid-morning calm and I knew, immediately, that there was a killer on the loose. I tore out of the patio door and across the lawn to intervene between predator and prey, facing down a fox with black tail feathers in its jaws. Shouting and growling, all animal myself, I was driven by instinct to protect our chickens, Cumulus and Burnet, from further onslaught.

The fox froze. Stared. I stared back. An unfathomable silence. Breaking the stalemate, I glanced over my shoulder, but my girls had evaporated. Moss (our third hen) is broody and spends much of her time on the nest, so I sidled over to the chicken run while still watching the fox, and there she was. Fluffsome, flat and completely unharmed.

I shut the bolt and the fox bolted in a shot. Not far though. I could still see those inscrutable eyes watching me from behind the shed and I realised how thin it was. This was no fabled trickster, but a hungry animal struggling through a heatwave-hardened hell of a summer.

Cumulus, Burnet and Moss, which had a lucky escape from a fox attack. Photograph: Nic Wilson

I brought the fox a bowl of water while my husband searched the neighbouring gardens in case our hens had escaped through the hedgehog hole in the fence. A quick internet search informed us that terrified chickens run for cover and often stay concealed for a few hours up to several days. They’ve been known to hide in trees and under kitchen tables. One cockerel even returned 10 days after an attack with two stray kittens in tow. Thankfully, by the evening we’d found both of them wandering along the road without their tails or any real sense of direction.

Named by my daughter after Melissa Harrison’s Hidden Folk in By Ash, Oak and Thorn, we’ve had our Orpington bantams – Moss, Cumulus and Burnet – for five years now. They’ve always free ranged in the garden during summer days, and though we’ve seen foxes on our trailcam footage, they’ve only ever been nocturnal visitors. How desperate must this one have been to risk a daylight raid? I do hope it makes a kill soon – just as long as it’s not our chickens.