Red Foxes Plentiful In Sharon

When I saw the fox standing in my neighbor’s yard in the middle of the afternoon, I knew immediately that something was wrong. 

He was very thin, with a skinny reddish tail that had a distinctive white ball of fur at its end. 

When healthy, the usually secretive, and mostly nocturnal, red fox would never put itself in such a vulnerable position, but this poor animal most likely has mange or distemper and is living on borrowed time. He looked at me through his swollen squinted eyes and slowly disappeared into the woods.

In stark contrast to this diseased creature, a healthy red fox is one of the most beautiful animals we will find, and judging from the amount of photos on my trail camera, they are plentiful as well. 

I am always excited when I retrieve the SD card from my camera and plug it into my computer and the image of a red fox appears. Their unique bright orange and red coat with high black socks and black trim around their ears puts them in the running for one of the most colorful creatures in our woods.

Most of the time, my photos reveal a solo hunter on the prowl under the cover of darkness, but on a couple of occasions I have captured them on film with an unfortunate rabbit hanging from their mouth. I can only imagine the chaos that must have ensued when the hungry fox chased the elusive rabbit under brush and over logs in the deep, dark woods. 

This action sequence rarely witnessed by humans takes place every night while we are sound asleep in the comfort of our wooden caves. It seems that Mother Nature can be so cruel at times, and at others, so beautiful, but in fact, she is neither. Nature just is. 

As the late Stephen Jay Gould was fond of saying, “Nature is what she is... persistent, amoral, and utterly fascinating... not immoral or moral.”

Many people in town have seen this ailing fox, including our animal control officer, who has tried unsuccessfully to capture the animal.  

We can only hope that the fox has already found a quiet place to rest and die somewhere in our woods while in some other spot, a healthy young kit, full of life, is learning from his mother, how to track down those tricky little rabbits.