Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
He ran till he came to a great big pen, the ducks and the geese were kept therein.
“A couple of you will grease my chin, before I leave this town-o.”
Although such depredations were no doubt exaggerated at times, thereby obscuring the fox's invaluable
role in rodent control, some foxes unquestionably found ducks, geese, and hens easy pickings and took
a heavy toll now and then on a farmer's flock. Indeed, my earliest recollection of wildlife involved a
fox that came visiting, evidently attracted by our flock of hens.
My mother hurried into my bedroom to tell me that there was a fox by the henhouse, and that my
grandfather was going to shoot it—not unreasonably, since the fox's proximity to the hens wasn't a
good omen for their future survival! We raced to the window, and I had a moment to view the handsome
creature. Then there came the loud report of Grandpa's gun. I must have blinked, and, presto! the fox
vanished so swiftly that I never saw it go. Grandpa had obviously missed, but the fox clearly received
the message, for it never returned.
A few years ago we experienced a far different sort of incident involving a fox and our domestic
birds. At that time we had kept a small flock of free-ranging geese for several years, and our local
foxes never bothered them. It was midwinter, with deep, soft snow, at the time of this event. We were
awakened in the night by an ungodly honking and squawking from the little three-sided goose house
just across the road.
I was in the midst of a nasty bout with the flu at that time, but I dragged myself out of bed the next
morning to see what had happened. There was a dead and partly eaten goose, but the others were all
missing. It turned out that they had flown to escape the danger and were here and there, floundering in
the deep snow and unable to fly or make much progress by walking. They weren't the only ones that
floundered, either. Feeling sick and miserable, I had to wade in the deep snow to retrieve them, one by
one. The tracks showed beyond a doubt that the culprit was a fox, and my opinion of foxes temporarily
dropped to an all-time low.
About noon the following day, I heard another uproar from the goose house and ran to the window.
There was a pathetically skinny, bedraggled fox chasing a goose across the road and through our open
barn door. I ran for my deer rifle, and as I reached the porch, the fox emerged from the barn
sans
goose.
One shot put an end to the wretched creature's misery. It was in the last stages of mange, which was
obviously going to be fatal within a short while, so I was happy to be able to end its suffering. That was
the only time a fox ever bothered our geese, and no doubt this fox, too weak to catch its normal prey,
went after them out of desperation.
Mange is by no means the only disease to afflict foxes. At times, rabies sweeps through fox pop-
ulations, and in fact one of the most common strains of rabies is known as the fox strain. For this
reason, humans should avoid contact with foxes, and should especially resist the temptation to rescue
orphaned baby foxes. Any fox that acts in a suspicious fashion—excessively tame, aggressive, porcu-
pine quills in its mouth, drooling, wandering about aimlessly, or other unusual behavior—should be
strictly avoided and reported immediately to the proper authorities. If contact does occur with a fox,
