In my attempts to know foxes, I came across a video showing the solitary hunter scouting for prey in the snow-covered Black Hills of South Dakota. Three feet of snow, the narrator says. Pumpkin-red fox on a pure white landscape. It is listening for field mice scurrying under the snow blanket. The video fox ambles along, listening for the snow-muffled footsteps of unseen mice.
It lopes lightly, nimbly. Then stops, looks down, stares at the snow, head cocking this way and that, ears tuning in. Consummate focus. Seconds pass. Then it does an astounding thing. It leaps straight up, flings its hind legs high into the air and shoots back to earth like a missile, snout first, plunging deep into the snow โ only its back feet and plume tail sticking up. It then emerges, snow-faced, flailing rodent in its mouth.
These dives are haphazardly successful, the narrator explains, unless. Then it is successful 75 percent of the time. That is another marvelous thing I have learned about foxes, the dog cousin found on every continent but Antarctica โ the most widely ranging meat-eater on the planet.
Fennec, cape, silver, swift, red and arctic foxes. Bat-eared, hoary, crab-eating and Tibetan sand foxes. To name a few. They walk on their toes. The female is called a vixen. They may weigh 7 to 24 pounds. They are nocturnal. Have vertical slit pupils like cats, see quite well at night. They have whiskers on both nose and legs that help them navigate. When hunting they stalk and pounce, rarely chasing although a red fox, for one, can run 30 miles an hour.
Omnivorous, they eat two pounds per day, have a superior sense of smell. They reproduce once a year, have a life span generally of one to four years, although some may live to be They growl, whine, yelp and bark โ their calls and shrieks often thought to be frightful, otherworldly. These are some of the facts I have gathered about foxes.
