The Scare-Fox (1910) was a mechanical device created to scare foxes away from pheasants and looks like a fantastic piece of folk art. The Scare-Fox worked by sending flashes of light outwards and showcasing a cartoonish face meant to scare the foxes away.
I wish I could see a video of the device in action, shooting light out. I love the way the Scare-Fox looks, and I think it belongs in the MoMA.
From The Public Domain Review:
Uncannily resembling an early work of outsider art, Head Gamekeeper D. Green's "scare-fox" was an altogether utilitarian contraption, devised to send foxes fleeing from his Herefordshire game preserve's pheasant field. Shutters driven by a clockwork mechanism sent light flashing from three sides of the crude box, while its fourth side bore a badly painted caricature of a human face. Before the "scare-fox", Green would burn fires at night to keep the foxes from the pheasants, "and even after that used to lose some". He was certain that two scare-foxes set up in any field or wood would keep the predators away, and had plans to make one with glass sides and bells timed to ring with the shutters.
See also: Hungry fox makes the wildest noises
