Photos of the little fox thanks to Marcy G.
Hi Marcy, Chale forwarded the darling pictures of the little fox in your yard. Thank you for sharing them! My daughter Cheryl in Co has a fox family that frequents her yard , grown members and the year's babies each year. She says it is a poor idea to feed them as it makes them quite tame and therefore more vulnerable to harm. However she feeds them and the squirrels and the raccoons and birds and all comers. Your little fox would enjoy kitten, then cat food, dried purina or the like little shapes and pellets. His teeth are tiny and incredibly sharp!
I had a pair in the house for 3 months once when I lived in west Texas in the early 1960's. They were the only survivors from a den of 6 kits, dug out by a rancher loosing lambs. The little vixen would eat from my fingers, (oatmeal cookie dough) but the little dog fox her brother would bite the fire out of me! I caged them in the kitchen by day, lest a child inadvertently let them out a door, but I turned them loose at night to run and play in the house. I can still hear them in my mind's memory, yapping and churring and making a variety of calls to each other as they ran under the furniture and played. They smell quite gamey and bad confined unless the newspaper in the cage is changed several times a day. (Ours was!) The little vixen would let me cuddle her and I remember the sweet wild smell when I buried my face in her fur.
When they were old enough to turn loose in the wild, about 5 months old we judged, we took them to the edge of woods along a dirt road near Glenrose, and opened the cage door. the little dog fox shot away and I thought "Oh no he will leave her!!" The little female eased out and went a few steps then looked back at me, and then her brother peeked out from some brush and barked to her and she ran away with him to live her little fox life. I am sure they learned to hunt catching grasshoppers and small things in the woods that spring.
Cheryl is my daughter that paints, and here is a pastel she did of one of her yard fox. Best, Edyth
