my wild neighbor

[anotheranon]

Went out my front door this morning and who did I see walking by like he owned the place?

A wild fox, strutting across my parking lot.

I'd never seen one up close "in the wild" (or at least, outside of a zoo) before. It was taller than I expected, kind of the size of a very lean, leggy beagle with a disproportionately fluffy tail.

It gave me a dismissive look and went about its business - not afraid of me at all, which made me a little nervous, for both of us. Humans and all the stuff we bring with us (cars, guns) are dangerous to wild animals, but the fox's fearlessness made me worry it might be rabid.

The same thought occurred to our community management, who sent out a flyer while I was at work warning everyone to avoid the fox. Animal control has been called, and I'm glad to hear that they're going to try and trap/release it rather than kill it.

The likely cause of his cruise through my neighborhood is the construction across the street that has uprooted a lot of the local fauna. That, and the abundance of bunnies and dumpsters are probably a real treat to a wild predator that is just trying to make a living.

The 8 year old animal nut in my hindbrain still thinks it was just damn cool though :)

Comments

[skill-grl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, one ran across my path a month or so ago when I was running in the park. Very, very cool. I'd seen a cayote while walking in WY, but this was my first fox (well, I saw one when I was little and we were driving in the middle of Canada).

[wcg.livejournal.com]

We have at least one fox in our suburban Maryland neighborhood. There's also a family of foxes living in Roland Park right in the middle of Baltimore. They used to come up to the Space Telescope Institute to scavenge in the middle of the night when I worked there.

They're all pretty fearless, from what I've seen.

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

Urban wildlife is ALWAYS damn cool ... it's reassuring that there are critters out there with the smarts to USE us rather than be ousted by us. So glad you got the treat of seeing such a pretty creature. :-)

Highly unlikely that your local Reynard is rabid ... even rural red foxes are pretty laid back where humans are concerned. When I was in my teens a vixen denned and raised cubs in a rockpile in one corner of of our front grainfield and she and her cubs were pretty nonchalant about farm equipment and people (you had to be practically on top of 'em to disturb 'em and even then they'd just saunter off ... )