Evidently that gray fox vixen, who last year bore her litter of five in the crawl space under my cabin at the edge of the Ozarks woods, knew a good place when she found it.
In April she was back once more.
No sooner had we arrived for our annual turkey season reunion of old friends than the youngsters presented themselves, and again there were five.
Nine or 10 inches at most from their noses to the ends of their fat, furry little tails, they moved in the uncertain, teetering manner of new kittens. Their eyes, not long open, seemed hardly to be focusing.
Occasionally, startled by some sound, they would make a rush for the den but miss the hole and bump into the wall instead.
Truth is, we never actually saw the mother fox, only her little ones. I suppose at night she went out to hunt, when they and we were sleeping. But during the days, surely she was there nursing them in that dark space below the floor, for plainly they were well-nourished.
We decided, nonetheless, to supplement their rations a bit. Probably a true wildlife expert would disapprove of that intrusion on the natural order. But we did it for our own pleasure.
The kits had refined tastes. For salad, they sampled the purple iris growing in a row along the cabin wall. As their main course, they preferred a cat food called Fancy Feast, in particular the “gourmet chicken feast.”
We spooned out dollops of the stuff on the ground outside the den, and set up chairs in a half-circle to observe. First one ventured out cautiously. Then another. Soon all were eating enthusiastically.
As long as we remained motionless they hardly seemed to notice us. And with the passage of days, they became quite used to an audience.
As they grew larger and more robust, differences in temperament could be seen among them. One was the “alpha,” a bit of a bully, and would bowl over any sibling that tried to poach a morsel. Another was noticeably the most timid.
The cabin from time to time has trespassing mice. Two we caught in traps, and deposited just outside the den. Within moments, they’d disappeared. The first real “kill.”
One night a cold front blew in, with howling wind, driving rain and temperature in the 30s.
The next morning, we found the den entrance had been blocked with compacted leaves to keep out the wet and cold — the work of a wise and capable mother.
For most of two weeks we constituted a mixed family: the vixen, her five kits and we two-legged animals ranging in number from four to seven.
Toward the end, the little foxes were taking cat food directly from the spoon. And at the final feeding on the last morning, one of them snatched the spoon from my hand and took it with him under the cabin.
As a friend quipped when I told him about that, I’d been outfoxed.
Dearer creatures than those hardly can be imagined. One ached to claim one for a pet, but it can’t be done. For, besides being against the law, attempts to tame wild things invariably have sad outcomes.
By now, most of a month has passed. I suspect they’re making frequent outings into the surrounding woods, or perhaps have left the den altogether, and are learning from their mother the skills they’ll soon need for being foxes on their own.
But, with any luck, the vixen will be back another year, or perhaps one of her offspring will. Because no fox will ever find a warmer welcome, or a safer place for birthing.
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