From Shaman’s Rock
by Jim Poling Sr.
I’m opposed to feeding wild animals. They get to like human food, depend on it and stop foraging for their natural foods.
However, I have a confession to make: I’ve been feeding a fox. It showed up in my yard one day looking shabby, thin and hungry. I noticed it was limping. Its left hind leg appeared to be badly injured.
The poor critter obviously was having difficulty hunting and probably would starve so I decided to help. I began putting out scraps of leftover meat.
Now we’ve become friends. it doesn’t limp off and hide if I come outside when it is in the yard. And, it comes occasionally to sleep in the sun on my deck.
It’s not surprising that we have gotten to know each other better and become friends. The friendly relationship between foxes and humans goes back hundreds of years.
Researchers opened a 16,500-year-old grave in Jordan and found the remains of a man and his pet fox. This was 4,000 years before the first-known human and domestic dog were buried together.
Some people see foxes as pests to be eliminated. Fox hunting has been a popular sport in Britain since the 16th century and continues today. It is legal to hunt down a fox in Britain with dogs if the fox has been damaging your property.
They are not easy prey to catch. They can run 70 kilometres an hour, jump three feet in the air and are so agile they can climb fences and traverse roofs.
They also have incredible endurance. There is one report of an Arctic fox walking almost 5,000 kilometres from Norway to Canada in three months. That’s more that 50 kilometres a day.
Foxes are members of the canine family but have some characteristics of cats. They have sensitive canine whiskers, spines on their tongues and walk on their toes, giving them their graceful cat-like tread.
Gray foxes, like cats, have retractable claws, making them the only members of the dog family that can climb trees.
But the fox has something that cats, and other animals, do not have: The ability to use the earth’s magnetic field to hunt. A fox can sense that magnetic field and when it lines it up with noise from a hidden mouse or bird, it pounces, most often successfully.
Oher animals are known to use the magnetic field for navigation but the fox is the only one known to use it for hunting.
Its clever hunting skills are only one reason that we humans have developed phrases such as sly as a fox and cunning as a fox. Since ancient times humans have observed how foxes display high levels of intelligence in finding food, avoiding predators, protecting their young and generally surviving in hostile environments.
We also see them as tricksters, as illustrated by The Fox and The Crow fable attributed to the Greek storyteller Aesop.
The story tells of a fox trotting through the forest, looking for food. It spies a crow sitting in a tree. The crow is holding in its beak a chunk of cheese the fox thinks would make a lovely start to breakfast.
The fox walks to the base of the tree and says: “Good morning, beautiful creature.”
The crow cocks its head to one side but does not reply, nor open its beak. So, the fox lays on more flattery, saying such a beautiful bird must have an exquisite voice. If she sang a song, she would become known as the Queen of the Birds.
The crow opens her beak to make a loud caw. The cheese falls directly into the fox’s mouth.
My fox was back the other day and was looking healthy. Its limp was gone, the sheen had returned to its coat and its tail was bushy with luxurious new growth.
It obviously is able to look after itself again and hunt the bush to catch whatever it needs to eat. However, it probably hasn’t forgotten the ease with which it has been getting a free meal in my yard.
Friends or not, I intend to be watchful for any fox trickery.
