In mild weather our dog Zeke likes to hang out on the elevated walk leading to our front door. It’s built like a deck with a gate, so he can’t get out into the yard. In the spring of 2011, he started barking at something in the side yard (which would be the back yard if I had oriented the house differently). It got to be a regular occurrence in the evening as it was beginning to get dark. We eventually saw what it was.
I see you looking at me
The fox paid no attention to the barking, and very little attention to us when we came out to look.
I think it was a red fox, based on the coloration and the black stockings. I am a little uncertain about this since he’s not really all that red. He also doesn’t have a very prominent white tip to his tail. But it doesn’t much resemble pictures of the gray fox I have seen. I wasn’t aware that the red fox is an imported canid, brought over by the English, naturally. The gray fox is the native, but the red fox has moved into essentially all the same habitats.
We began to see the fox quite often. Once, early on, he seemed to be a little uncertain, so he hid. Or at least he thought he did.
This shrub is not quite big enough
This seems to be the same fox in the spring of 2012.
Spring 2012
This fox (I assume it was always the same fox) was completely indifferent to our presence on the deck watching him. Once he actually lay down in the back yard, not far from the deck.
Let’s take it easy for a while
And then he took a nap.
Nappy time
After a short time, he got up, pooped, and walked casually into the woods. I don’t know whether it was an editorial comment, but it convinced me that foxes and dogs share a similar sense of humor.
A breeding pair had a den somewhere nearby, probably across Wildlife Trail, which runs down the side of our lot. I heard and saw the fox on the road occasionally when I took Zeke for his final walk of the day. I saw the kits once, and a neighbor reported seeing them on Fouche Gap Road.
The fox had a regular route that he followed every evening up from the woods, across our driveway and then into a neighbor’s yard. I heard them in the woods occasionally, sounding a lot like a dog, but not really mistakable for a dog.
We loved seeing the fox. It seemed that we were witnessing a part of wild nature that is rare any more, even in our rural corner of northwest Georgia. But eventually we decided that it was not a good idea for the fox to think humans were harmless. It seemed not such a good idea for either human or fox. So I started throwing rocks at him when he came into the yard.
And now we don’t see them any more.
Great photos (top one seems broken, though)! The two of him curled up are very good.
Yes, it’s a shame you have to establish those boundaries but you’re right.
I see foxes as road kill on infrequent occasions, so I know they’re around. But I haven’t seen one around our property in many, many years now. I’m guessing that has something to do with the coyotes.
I fixed the one at the top.
I hated to start throwing rocks at them, but even yelling at them didn’t seem to bother them.
I have wondered about these foxes and the coyotes we have around here. I didn’t think they would share territory, and I figured that coyotes would chase the foxes out. But maybe barking dogs bother coyotes more than they do foxes.
A neighbor’s cat disappeared a few months ago. My wife was wondering whether a fox would kill a cat, but I doubt it. They aren’t that much bigger, and from what I have read, they don’t typically do that. Our cats watched the fox but neither one seemed particularly interested in the other. I suspected a coyote, but I’m not sure about that either, since the foxes stayed around and none of our cats disappeared. Until recently, at least. One true feral hasn’t been around in a while. But cars do occasionally get them. So we don’t know about that.
Oh wow – that top picture is fantastic. They sure are… foxy, aren’t they?
Both coyotes and foxes will prey on small pets, including cats. My understanding is that coyotes are solitary hunters, not pack hunters. That may be surprising given the social behavior of coyotes, but apparently all that fuss is just a big coyote party.
I assume foxes are the same way – probably even more so. Do they engage in social behavior like coyotes? Hmmm – I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.
You have more experience with feral cats than I do, but we’ve also had two cats just vanish, many years ago. One ended up with a neighbor a couple miles away – apparently he just didn’t like us. The other we never found a trace of. Two other cats didn’t disappear, but we did find them dead without explanation – my guess is venomous snakes.
The weights given for foxes at the DNR website was so low — 8 to 14 pounds — that I figured they would hesitate to attack a cat that was almost as heavy as them, like some of our cats. I wonder how accurate those weights are. Our foxes certainly looked bigger than our biggest cat.