https://downeast.com/room-with-a-view-sept-2017/

ROOM

WITH

A

VIEW

By Franklin Burroughs;Down East Magazine

Just inside the woods behind our kitchen, a feldspar
outcropping was blasted about a century ago,
leaving a vertical ledge that looks like an ancient
ruin. Ashes and maples have grown up in the rubble
at its base; ferns and moss have colonized all but the
steepest parts of it. For at least 50 years, porcupines have
occupied one of its deeper crannies. They are model tenants.
They mind their business; we mind ours. When we happen
upon one, it seems abashed and bustles off as best it can.

Early one morning this spring, I glanced out
the kitchenwindow and found we had
new tenants. A red fox cub sat on a flat rock under
the bird feeder, about 30 feet away, staring
intently in at me. I watched it until the coffee was
ready.When I looked out after breakfast, it was
curled up on therock and fast asleep. It was about
the size of a six-week-old kitten, and just as fluffy.

It turned out to have two equally unshy
siblings; the parentswere more circumspect.
The vixen was much the smaller — subtract the tail and
she was scarcely bigger than a housecat, perhaps half the
size of her mate. She would hang back in the woods
while the kits came out to sun, sleep, or frolic under the
bird feeder. Within two weeks, both parents spent their
days hunting, leaving the kits unsupervised. The kits
began venturing farther from the den, sometimes
together and sometimes separately.

Red Fox with Muskrat kill

Red foxes are astonishingly adaptable, inhabiting most of
the Northern Hemisphere, from above the Arctic Circle
down deep into the tropics — deserts, alpine meadows,
tropical rainforests, the Mongolian steppes, and the
Siberian taiga. But they are partial to our species, and have
hung around us so persistently as to inhabit a particular
cranny of our collective imaginations, as evidenced by
folklore, proverbs, and fables that go back for millennia,
and, more recently, by nursery rhymes, children’s books,
and animated cartoons. They are never entirely wild and
fearsome, but familiar and local, skulking around barnyards,
henhouses, and rabbit hutches like pickpockets and shysters
around country fairs and racetracks. In most stories, they
outwit everybody, and then themselves. We apparently
have a sneaking fondness for such sneaky fellows, and
our stories generally let them off with nothing worse
than a comeuppance and a bruise or two. They will be
back; the game will go on.

As they grew accustomed to us, the kits would sit and
watch, cocking their ears quizzically when spoken to, or
else prancing flirtatiously. In my experience, this
endearing behavior is typical, as though kits cannot
decide whether people represent threats or potential
playmates. Even adult foxes, at a safe distance, sit and
study us attentively: they the ornithologists and we the
birds. Their behavior most closely resembles that of
feral cats — too familiar with us greatly to fear us; too
independent to crave closer contact.

Before myth became history, did foxes —
like dogs, cats, chickens, and livestock —
consider the trade-offs involvedand cast
their fate with ours, then think better of
it after a few eons? Throughout the historical
past we have trapped,hunted, hounded, and
poisoned them to the best of ourability.
Samson caught them by the hundreds,
set theirtails on fire, and became a hero
of the highest order.Yet they don’t dread
us and can’t quite leave us. Behind their
predatory opportunism and our persecution
there seems to be a sort of reproachful
longing for amight-have-been that neither
species can quite ignore.

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https://www.thecanidproject.com/
articles/2017/8/21/seeing-more-red-foxes-in
-your-neighborhood-or-town-heres-why