I have written about the fox before. Now I’m beginning to think we have two. It makes sense that there would be a pair, since we have seen fox kits up here. The two, if there are two, seem to look somewhat different, and they seem to behave differently. One seems to be indifferent to us and the dogs, as long as we don’t come too close. But recently we have seen a fox disappearing into the woods at a dead run.  I’m used to having to actually approach the fox to make it retreat, and then it just trots away and turns around to see whether I will come any closer. It seems that the shy fox is a little lighter in color, but it’s hard to tell because we have only had a fleeting glance, and that from the rear.

Saturday night a fox made its regular appearance at the usual time. It was just after sundown, around 8 pm EDT. It was light enough to see but too dark to get a decent photograph without putting the camera on a stable platform.

The three original travelers and the fox

Here the three original castaway cats (yellow arrows) watch the fox (red arrow), who is trying to hide behind a bush. The cats are Chloe and her two children, Rusty (up front) and Dusty, who is perched on a big rock. The fox was watching me and Leah and paying only a little attention to the cats. The cats had been further away, but they came out a little closer, apparently to investigate. They were not afraid. In fact, Rusty was more interested in jumping on Chloe than in watching the fox.

Watchful but not particularly afraid

This was taken with the longest telephoto setting on our little point-and-shoot Nikon. I had to rest it on the deck railing and the exposure was long enough that even slight motion by the fox blurred the image. The fox was probably around 50 or 60 feet away.

Rusty, Chloe and Dusty, semi-interested in the fox

Chloe, the dark cat, was watching the fox, while Rusty, up front, was watching Chloe. After a few moments Rusty pounced on Chloe. Dusty was too far away to tell what he was interested in.

This event was a little confusing, because this fox’s coat looked like the lighter, shy fox’s. I haven’t seen both foxes (if there really are two) together, so it’s hard to tell. But this one acted the way I’m used to. When I tried to get closer, he retreated, but slowly and not far. He stayed at the end of the driveway and waited for me to go back inside. Then he came in close to where Rusty and Chloe had been sitting, which is where Leah usually puts their food.

We have been noticing that the cat trays we leave in the garage are usually licked clean by morning, which is not normal for the cats. Possums and raccoons do that, but whatever is doing it is not tempted by peanut butter crackers, which we have been using to bait a live-capture trap. Peanut butter crackers have always been a sure bet to catch possums and raccoons, so we are pretty sure that it isn’t either of them. We know for sure that one of the neighbor’s dogs came into the garage for the buffet at least once, but that dog does not normally roam free. So we think something else is eating the catfood, and it’s probably a fox.

There is no sign so far that the foxes consider the cats to be food.

The one resident up here who is not indifferent is Zeke. He desperately wants to meet the fox. Last weekend when I took him and Lucy for their last walk of the evening, we saw a fox run away from the front of the garage. I was holding the dogs’ retractable leashes in one hand. When Zeke saw the fox, he took off, jerking the leash out of my hand. It also jerked Lucy’s leash out of my hand, and unfortunately, it was tangled with Zeke’s. Lucy’s leash happened to be on the opposite side of a post I was standing next to. When Zeke ran away, it pulled Lucy back towards me and the post. I had no idea what was happening, and neither did Lucy. Fortunately Lucy’s collar came off, so after she bounced around next to me, she ran off towards the front door as Zeke disappeared into the night, trailing both of their leashes.

There was no point in trying to find Zeke, in the dark and rain, so I went in to make sure Lucy was OK. She was. A couple of hours later Leah went out and heard Zeke barking. I took an umbrella and a flashlight and followed the barking to him. He had wrapped his leash around two trees and was stuck with about two feet of slack. I rescued him and took him back inside. The fox, whose eyes I could see in the flashlight beam, was about fifty feet away from Zeke. I think he was laughing.