saw a silver fox last night while out with the puppy

[TorchTheWitch]

The red ones are always around though they only come out late at night. When I'm with the dog they sometimes get curious and watch from a distance for a few seconds before dashing away again. Though I've lived in the immediate area for almost two decades this is only the third time I've seen one of the silver ones. The last time I saw one was late last winter when my dog Boo was only on three legs because of the tumor he had in his knee but still his usual self wanting to go out for walks (or hops). The only other time I ever saw one was many years ago not too long after I moved to this area. I always feel like it's a big privilege to see one since it's such a rare sight, and you don't get much of a chance to get a look at them when you do spot one since they're so shy you only get a few second visual when they dash from one hiding spot to another.

The silver ones are much more shy than the regular red ones and slightly larger (though they might just look a little larger because their fur is both longer and a lot thicker than the red ones - supposedly they do have larger feet though so maybe they are a wee bit bigger). The first time I saw one here I wasn't at all sure what it was. I thought the silver foxes stayed up north in the mountainous regions of PA, but we definitely have them here in the Philly burb where I live.

Last night when I was out with my new Akita pup and I saw a silver one for only the third time in all these years it actually stopped when it spotted us and watched us for a bit. It even followed behind us for about a block though very stealthily hugging the shadows close to bushes and trees. Both the pup and I kept looking back to see if he was still there, but when we got to the big road again and we looked back again it was sitting on someone's lawn watching us leaving and it yawned. How cool that not only did I get such a good look at one finally but that it was interested enough to follow us for a bit and even was so relaxed that when we got to the big road and it decided to end it's following there it sat down and kept watching us and even yawned. When the pup and I got across the big road I had to turn back and look one last time, but it was gone.

It looked like this but not so much of the black fur (it was more silvery all over like the other two times I've seen one)...



I still feel a little giddy about this encounter. I'm much more excited about it than the pup... but what does he know - he's only been with me for a couple of weeks now and we see the red foxes all the time, so he probably thought it was no big deal. It's kind of strange to think that because the silver fox sightings have been so extremely infrequent we may not ever see one again in puppy's lifetime. I'm kind of encouraged though because though I've only spotted one three times now in all these years the timing between the second sighting and this third one wasn't even a year. Maybe they're becoming more prevalent around here. I hope so. I never used to see the red foxes much until the past couple of years I started seeing them often, and now suddenly almost every night. Just in the past week we've even seen one of the red ones before dark, and I've never seen one before when it wasn't late at night.

[livetohike]

1. So cool! I love seeing foxes, but have only seen red ones

here in north central PA and not that frequently.

[GoCubsGo]

3. Actually, that IS a red fox.

It's just a melanistic form.

Cool stuff! We mostly have gray foxes down here. The red fox is not very common, and I doubt I'll ever see a the silver form around here.

[TorchTheWitch]

6. I thought they were but they're so different

They look just like the red ones except for being bushier and maybe a little bigger but they're WAY more shy. I wonder if they mingle together or the red and silver ones separate themselves? I always understood that black squirrels are the same as the gray ones, but the black ones here don't mingle with the gray ones, their tails don't seem quite as bushy and they tend to stick around the tree where they live and don't run amok breaking into peoples' trashcans or tearing up their patio furniture. But as far as I know they're just the same as the gray squirrels with some kind of coloring anomaly.

[TorchTheWitch]

4. I think we have a lot of the red ones because of all the bunnies

We have a TON of bunnies here. The people around here rather like the foxes to keep the bunny population from getting way out of control... they already are a nuisance tearing up peoples' gardens, so the foxes tend to keep the bunnies from getting totally out of hand. There's a little hill near my house behind one of the commercial buildings where the bunnies like to congregate at dawn and dusk... there's easily 20 to 40 bunnies on that little hill sitting in the grass every day in nice weather at dawn and dusk. I always wonder what they're up to since they never seem to be doing anything but just sitting there. The people around here like to joke that they're having meetings about their big plot to take over the town.

There's also a strip of land a couple of blocks from my house that some wealthy person left to the township in their will a long time ago under some kind of trust to be kept pristine so people could just enjoy nature there. There's lots of woods and a big field and a lovely big stream that's fed by an underground spring a few miles upstream so the water is relatively clean. The trust pays for a private company to cut the grass in the field and provide 24/7 security to chase away boozing teenagers or other people up to no good and trashing up the land or fouling the stream. I had no idea it was even here for years till one of the local cops told me about it, and I think that those people that know it's there believe it's private property. I think those of us that know about it like to keep it on the down-low so it doesn't get crowded with people. But you'd probably never know it was there at all if you didn't know how to get into the gully where a long time ago was a train track and follow it till it breaks out into the field.

The gully starts only a few steps from the end of my street (I think the train tracks actually used to go through the end of my dead-end street but there's a little parking lot there now). The foxes make their dens in the slopes of the gully, but you never see them there (I guess because they need to be quite and invisible around their dens so no one finds where they live). In the beginning part of the gully from my house there's several houses whose back yards back right up to the gully and the sides of the slopes aren't so steep there. Some of those folks make big gardens on those slopes, but I think they lose a lot veggies from the various critters. One of them does a huge section of pumpkins every year but almost never gets one fully grown because some kind of pumpkin-loving critters take big bites out of each one while they're still fairly small. The township lets them keep the gardens there even though it's public land as long as they don't put up any kind of fencing to protect the gardens. This summer one of the people that lives there planted a bunch of sunflowers. I wanted to get a photo of them when they got really big, but that damn hurricane Irene annihilated them. I hope they do it again next year. That was the only time in my life I've seen a whole bunch of sunflowers together and that big. Some of the people around here plant one or two but they don't help them stand up, so they fall down long before they get a chance to get all that big.

Funny, I never see the foxes in the gully or the woods or the field there, but that could be because I only go there with the dog in the daylight... the gully is REALLY creepy late at night, and the foxes seem to only go roaming late at night. I always see them late at night just around the back streets of the neighborhood. I think it's because they're breaking into peoples' trashcans at night.

It's only been in the last couple of years that I started seeing the red foxes more and more and only at the end of this summer that I tend to see at least one almost every night. I don't know if that's because there are more of them or because they're getting bolder. They definitely are getting bolder because now they aren't so keen on keeping out of sight as they used to be and will even stop and watch me and the dog for a few seconds when they used to just streak from here to there to keep away from you. We even saw that one last week before it got dark, and that never happened before. He was really cute. I think he might have been a youngster since he looked a bit smaller than the ones I'm accustomed to seeing. He ran out from under a pine tree fairly near me and the pup and then hid behind the corner of someone's fence peeking out at us. Their tails are so huge and bushy sometimes it looks like one cat following right on the heels of another cat when you first get a glimpse of one in the dark.

[rurallib]

2. Foxes are about the most beautiful creatures going

only caught glimpses of a couple myself, red ones.

[blueknight]

5. WOW

so beautiful

[RebelOne]

7. The only time I had ever seen a fox outside of a zoo

was when I was in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. I was staying in a condo and looked out through the sliding glass doors and saw a red fox in the field next to the condo. I was thrilled to see that little critter.

[laylah]

8. Thank you for sharing this.

I just had to post it to my daughter's (fizzgig) FB page as she has had a "foxy friend" since she was but a wee one. Thanks again :hug: