Wild Things: Our furtive gray fox

A gray fox. (Ed Kanze Photo)

By ED KANZE

The red fox tends to be seen more than the gray, which is also widespread. The disparity in  sightings may have to do with the fact that the red fox abounds in farm country, suburbs, and even cities, while the gray is more apt to stick to the backwoods, or to the edge of forests. There was a time when I could say I’d seen far more reds than grays, but as time has gone on, and I’ve spent more and more time in the woods, the grays have reached a point where they outnumber the reds by a wide margin.

The first gray fox I ever saw was in Westchester County. At the time, I worked at Teatown Lake Reservation. A neighbor had called to report an active gray fox den in a patch of woods about to be leveled by bulldozers. Condominiums were coming soon. I hurried over. Walking up a slope gouged by earth-moving machines, I saw a cantaloupe-sized hole in the ground just where I’d been told it would be. As I neared, I could see an array of skulls and bird wings outside the opening. A smell of death filled the air. One more step, and a gray fox burst out and raced into the woods. I was about to leave on a trip, and to my disappointment, I never got back for a second look. I hope those grays raised their young quickly. Change was coming, and it wasn’t going to make their lives easier.

As far as I know, the gray fox is the only member of the dog family that routinely climbs trees. A friend who lives near a gray fox den (a den that’s used year after year) once watched a gray fox chase a gray squirrel across his yard. The squirrel bolted for a tree and ran up it, perhaps counting on safety off the ground. But the gray fox had other ideas. It ran right up after the squirrel and climbed back down with a meal to share with its offspring. The feet and legs of a gray fox are modified for climbing, and the claws are more like those of squirrels than of red foxes and dogs.

We are delighted to have gray foxes as neighbors and have the pleasure of seeing one from time to time. They are colored largely but not entirely a salt-and-pepper gray, with rusty fur around the back of the neck and under the tail and belly, and black embellishments on the face. The tip of a gray fox’s fluffy tail is black. The tip of a red fox’s fluffy red tail is white.

Like dogs, gray foxes bark. We sometimes hear them out in the yard at night. They sound like pets that have grown hoarse through too much scolding of postal workers, UPS drivers, and FedEx delivery people. 

A few years ago, our love of all wildlife, predators included, was tested. We have pet ducks. For several years they free-ranged, except for nights locked up in our Quack House. One day, I heard a waterfowl ruckus and ran down the driveway, where I’d last seen the ducks. Our dominant drake, Blackberry, also  known as Jebediah, was nowhere to be seen. I rounded up the rest of the quackers and confined them in our duck pen. Then I went searching. I quickly found a gray fox making off with Blackberry. The fox bolted, Blackberry was dropped dead on the ground, and soon we were having a funeral. We are much more careful now about duck safety, and we still admire a gray fox every time we see one.