The Quick Brown Fox

Joanna here, talking a couple things.

I take my dog on a three-mile drive down the road sometimes to do the morning walk.

I go to a pleasant place in the National Park, a preserved mountain farm with an exhibition of old, old buildings, some native to the spot, some saved from destruction and moved in. It's a teaching site with a docent, illustrating life in the Appalachian Mountains in the last couple centuries.

Nice place, full of old smells, I suppose. Anyhow, the dog likes it.

Driving home with a tired, happy dog I spotted a fox crossing the road and that’s what I’m writing about. Foxes.

This is only the second fox I’ve seen in all my time living here. They’re obviously cautious. I suspect they’re also thin on the ground. 

Grey fox

I don’t think folks go out of their way to kill them. We’re a long way from professional chicken farms up here, hunting isn’t allowed in the National Park, nobody local gets dolled up in red jackets and rides across the fields hunting them, and nobody hangs foxes on the front of their pickup to bring them home for trophy bragging and the winter’s meat.

So why don’t I see more foxes?
That’s a big I dunnoh.
I saw them all the time in my small town in Germany.

Join the company of lions rather than assume the lead among foxes.
     Talmud, Aboth IV.20

The two foxes I’ve seen locally were both grey foxes. Grey foxes camouflage beautifully in the shadows. They move like cats. In fact, that's what I thought I was seeing this morning till I got a good look at it.

According to Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries (who should know) they eat meat like birds and rabbits in the winter and spring, adding more insects and fruit in the summer and fall.

Red fox

Fruit? Foxes eat fruit? 
I mean, who knew?

Grey foxes are “adept climbers, and use trees to escape enemies.” Next time you see a grey fox in a tree, that’s how it got there.

The red fox, which I haven’t seen any of but which is available locally anyway,
is red-furred with black legs and a white tip to its tail. 

Medieval fox, preaching

You will be pleased to know that “poultry loss to this species [the red fox] is largely due to improper husbandry practices,” so all you chicken keepers out there had better up your game.

Now when the king had assembled all his subjects together, there was no one absent save Reynard the Fox, against whom many grievous accusations were laid.

     Reynard the Fox

 

The red fox is larger than the grey. Grey is 8 pounds average. The red fox runs 9 to 12 pounds.

The grey fox is definitely an olde tyme native to North America. Been here since the mid-Pliocene. It's an American fox.

 

another Medieval fox,this one a scholar

The red fox’s native credentials have been more problematic. Anecdotal evidence suggests at least some were imported from Europe in the Eighteenth Century so colonists could chase them across the fields on horseback.

But DNA evidence supports the native status. The red fox, like the grey, crossed from old world to the new along the land bridge to Alaska, doubtless stealing bones from the middens of prehistoric ancestors of AmerIndians on the way.

Foxes have made a home for themselves not only in the deep woods, where I live, or in farming country, but also in suburban neighborhoods, where they keep the mice down.

If you see them in your urban or suburban home, you may rest easy. Mostly they leave adult cats alone, cats being an animal almost their own size. The disappearing cats are likely coyote dinners.

 

We're always on the side of the animal that's being chased. We always seem to be on the side of the rabbit or the fox and not on the side of the hounds.     
     Norman Jewison

We're always on the side of the animal that's being chased. We always seem to be on the side of the rabbit or the fox and not on the side of the hounds. Norman Jewison
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/fox

e're always on the side of the animal that's being chased. We always seem to be on the side of the rabbit or the fox and not on the side of the hounds. Norman Jewison
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/fox

We're always on the side of the animal that's being chased. We always seem to be on the side of the rabbit or the fox and not on the side of the hounds. Norman Jewison
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/fox

Leaving aside the arctic fox in the north of Europe and the corsac fox whose range extends to Eastern Russia, the only fox in Europe is the red fox.

Therefore, in The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck by Beatrix Potter, Jemima is menaced by a red fox.
Reynard the Fox – the European fable dating as far back as the 12th Century -- was a red fox. Dipping into Reynard's extensive story cycle ... one recent interpretation by John Masefield gives us.

 

On a shelf of grass in a thick of gorse

sleeping with his nose in his brush

That would bleed a hound and blind a horse.

There he slept in the mild west weather

With his nose and brush well tucked together,

He slept like a child, who sleeps yet hears

With the self who needs neither eyes nor ears.

 

 

Do they have foxes where you live?

Life being what it is, we may not see them often.

What about coyotes?

 

Comments

[Liz V.]

I once called the local department of natural resources about an apparently sick fox. The officer explained that foxes generally are nocturnal but, when cubs are born, both parents hunt night and day to feed the cubs. Small wonder the fox looked sick.

[Joanne Bourne]

Americans can picture Mommy and Daddy Fox working their paws to the bone to pay for the kids' college.

Second job?
Check.
Scrambled eggs for dinner?
Check.
Cute furry tail and pointed ears?
Well. Not so much.

[Kareni]

Once at a national park, I said to my husband, "Look at that dog." He told me it was a coyote. Oops. I've never seen a fox... unless I mistook it for a cat.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Joanna, we get red foxes around here in my tree-sy suburban neighborhood. No often but delightful when they make and appearance. I've never seen a coyote around here, but nonetheless, my cats are strictly indoor. I suspect cars are more dangerous to them than coyotes!

[Mary T]

I live in an older suburban area, with lots of well established trees and some woodsy areas. It's less unusual to spot deer, but every once in a while we will spot a (red) fox also. I think they are beautiful animals. It always strikes me as so unusual that they exist so close to urban areas.

I have never seen a coyote though - even when I lived in California many years ago. I heard a lot about them when I lived there but never saw one myself.

[Kareni]

Or, if you're like me, you saw a coyote and thought it was a dog ....

[Sue McCormick]

We have LOTS of deer in Columbia (Missouri), so I suspect foxes (and coyotes). I'm not sure I've seen either. But I HAVE seen foxes, back in the days when I lived in St. Louis. I would see them in the wooded area of St. Louis County.

Also (although I never saw them), a fox and his vixen would travel in from the western part of St. Louis county, fo have their kits in an overgrown former truck farm, just a block east of our house. The animal protection people would haul them out to an animal refuge in the western part of the county. But they would come back next year to this "safe place" to have next year's family.

I don't know why it seemed safe to them.

[Lillian Marek]

The fox went out on a chilly night,
and prayed of the Moon to give him light,
for he'd a long way to travel that night
until he reached his den, oh

Or something like that, if I remember at all correctly. I've only ever seen foxes back when we used to go camping in Maine. Here we have increasing numbers of deer, the occasional pheasant and wild turkey, and the wildlife most of us could skip, especially when it wants to move into the house—raccoons, squirrels and rats. Especially that last. But they seem to go with living by the mill stream.

[Sonya Heaney]

We're not *supposed* to have foxes in Australia, but they were introduced in the nineteenth century.

You see them around Canberra all the time - often dead on the sides of the roads (along with a gazillion kangaroos). However, we used to have one that travelled through our garden most days.

[Andrea Penrose]

What a wonderful post, Joanna! I adore foxes, and have ever since reading a wonderful book called "Cinnabar, the One O'Clock Fox," about a very clever fox who enjoyed teasing the hunters. I've always found them beautiful.

Have never seen a grey fox and didn't know they climbed—how cool. But a few summers ago there was a family of foxes on the golf course I walked every evening. The cubs would play—I swear they really did—in the sand traps by getting on the top edge and sliding down to the bottom, then run back up and do it again. It was amazingly funny. I see them occasionally darting across a country road here in Connecticut.

But recently I also saw one right in the heart of London—he dashed out of Green Park right by the Churchill War Rooms. The crowds all just gasped and watched as he darted between two parked cars, seemed to decide this wasn't a good idea and then zipped back into the park to disappear in the bushes near the Queen's exotic bird sanctuary. (Ummm, I won't speculate on what he eats.)

[Mike Hall]

Living on the southern edge of London (UK) I see lots of red foxes. Three or four different ones visit our garden every day, always keeping a wary eye out for our neighbour's cats which sometimes chase them off. They have no fear of humans though.

Our foxes don't seem to like fruit as they ignore the windfalls from our apple tree but scour the patio for the sunflower heart shells dropped by the finches on our bird feeders. They also dig small holes in the lawn looking for insects and worms and like to defecate everywhere, habits which take the edge off the pleasure of their visits.

[Annette N]

Here within the city limits of Austin Texas, we have raccoons, possum, foxes and coyotes. I live in a town house community and I have seen the raccoons, the possums but have only seen foxes out in the edges of town and have never seen a coyote. But, like honesty, I know it is there and will recognize it when I see it.

[Mary M.]

Where I live, on the edge of the Greater Phoenix area, the Salt River-Maricopa Indians are planting shopping centers and office complexes instead of cotton these days. So the coyotes have had to spread out, some into my suburban neighborhood. People who thought the block walls surrounding their yards protected their small dogs have found out otherwise. Hopefully, the coyotes will gradually reverse course and move further into the desert, but right now they're a bit of a menace.

[Joanne Bourne]

There are more coyotes than you'd think. They sure do look like dogs and are easy to overlook.

Out in California they apparently live on family pets. The cat on the front stoop. The fluffy dog in the back yard.

"Yum yum" goes the coyote.

[Joanne Bourne]

Absolutely. Cats need to "learn" that cars are big predators.

When I brought my cat to live in the suburbs I took her out into the broad grassy front yard. I lay down and she sat next to me.

I waited till a car came by and immediately I jumped up and ran in a panicked burst of speed for the front door.

The cat looked surprise and then she immediately ran too.

I crouched on the porch looking out at the street, panting. Cat did the same.

After that, whenever she heard a car she ran into the bushes.

[Joanne Bourne]

You're lucky to see those lovely foxes.

They're earning their keep in your neighborhood, keeping down the mice and the rabbits.

[Joanne Bourne]

That former truck farm has virtues you don't know about. Mice, maybe.

[Joanne Bourne]

I remember that poem!

When I'd go to my sister's house in Maine I wouldn't so much see foxes. Lots of cool stuff, though.

I saw a lynx once.

[Joanne Bourne]

My understanding of Australian wildlife is that ANY introduction is problematic. A few are disastrous. And the Nineteenth Century was inhabited by idiots.

I may be wrong about this though.

[Joanne Bourne]

This is so funny.

I'm glad I'm not a fox in Green Park. Very glad.

But I would possibly like to be one of those fox kits sliding, sliding, sliding down the sandtrap.

[Joanne Bourne]

Animals are so ... earthy.

I think the great battle between foxes and man is the chicken stealing bit. But digging up the garden sounds like a good second-string peeve.

Maybe foxes like berries instead of apples. For instance, there are "fox grapes"

[Joanne Bourne]

I don't know whether we're getting more coyotes or maybe coyotes are now getting national publicity and have become celebrities.

I don't mind coyotes much because they haven't eaten my cat yet. If they do that, I will change my opinion of them drastically.

My own thought -- this is not popular in my home town -- is that we need wolves.

[Joanne Bourne]

My sister, in California, has an eight-foot block wall around her back garden. She doesn't trust it to keep the coyotes out.

Those who put their trust in eight-foot walls are often disappointed.

I dunnoh about coyotes moving out into the desert. They seem to adapt well to the suburbs

[Michelle H]

And the general wisdom is you cannot get a cat to do what it doesn't want to do. And it seems if you want them to do something, they just naturally won't want to do it. On the other hand, isn't it true that lots of animal training involves using what they already naturally do, and channeling it into your desired outcome. How clever, Joanne! We love our cats here.

[Michelle H]

Fox appearance have increased here in our Midwest U.S. city in recent years. We recently moved back 'home' after 38 years of living in a couple other locations for work. The fox sightings are right in town, neighborhoods and parks, and it's newsworthy. Loss of habitat as the city expands into previously farming and woodland areas are most likely to blame. And there are numerous natural corridors that are probably helping them travel through to find new places to den. One example being an extensive area of land converted from old railroad beds (east-west and north-south) to hike and bike trails all near suburban areas but bordered by some measure of natural area. But of all my family, I still haven't seen one yet! I'd so love to.

[Karin]

I've seen red foxes in New Jersey. And this is the song "The Fox", which I never knew came from the poem Lillian was talking about. I had this album when I was a kid, and I still love it, though it's a bit bloodthirsty!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSN4WucIFNg

"Then old Mother Flipper-Flopper jumped out of bed,
Out of the window she cocked her head,
Crying, "John, John! The gray goose is gone,
And the fox is on the town-oh!"

[Janice]

It's a problem here in LA. Lately where I live coyotes have been crossing Ballona Creek from the dry hills and oilfields to the south into residential areas and dining off feral cats and pet cats whose owners Just Don't Get It. The count this summer is up to over 30. There are coyote warnings posted all over.

[Joanne Bourne]

We need predators in the ecosystem. They're right and natural ... which our houses and yards and pets aren't, really. I kinda like seeing them around.

I might feel very differently if the coyotes were snacking off my dog and cat, or even knocking over the garbage cans.

We have bear right around me. I go for a live and let live policy, but I've stopped taking the dog for walks after dark.

[Joanne Bourne]

My cat and my dog are both interested in me and what I want.

The difference is the dog tries to do what I want and the cat looks at what I want and then thinks about it.

[Joanne Bourne]

Grey foxes are less impressive. Red foxes, though, are just utterly cool.

Why are they red, I wonder. You'd think they'd want more camouflage.

[Joanne Bourne]

Traditional little kids songs are the most bloodthirsty things.

"Here comes a light to light you to bed.
Here comes a hatchet to chop off your head."

I mean -- who teaches innocent little kids to sing stuff like that?

[Gamistress66]

I've seen a red fox run threw my yard a couple time over the past few years and once coming home from dinner out my niece and I saw one cut across the main street into my development. They're quick and agile little buggers and caused my to look twice to be sure what I saw, alas too quick to even think to get a pic

[Liz V.]

Curious, I had to google. Turns out, it was a Middle English poem set to music, and at least two illustrated books exist. You can find the text on Wikipedia under "The Fox".

[Sonya Heaney]

You're not wrong! We had too many destructive species introduced in the colonial era.

Customs rules in Australia are so strict that - even though I get my arrivals card signed at luggage collection so I can skip the checks - even as a local I feel like I'm going to be arrested every time I fly home!

Because we're so isolated, it's important to preserve our bizarre brand of nature.

[Mary M.]

It's said, a dog comes when you call; a cat takes a message and will get back to you ... if it wants to.

[Joanne Bourne]

They are fast. I see deer and turkeys and this year's crop of rabbits. Not a one of them as fast as the fox.

[Joanne Bourne]

What is it they say? Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.