From Disney to the Brothers Grimm

Once again, my timing is off.

All spring I've been taking pictures and videos of the fox kits out by the old barns.

So. Frickin. Cute.

Should have posted some a while ago. The posts would have written themselves, right?

At their peak, I counted 7 kits. Running and pouncing and wrestling with each other. Cue the flutes and whistles.

That was probably around the beginning of May.

As they got older I began to see them all the time. I couldn't walk outside without interrupting at least three or four. They were everywhere.  Feasting on berries under the mulberry trees. Racing around the pasture. Darting in and out of the barns. I loved watching them.

They coexisted peacefully with the sheep. Each ignored the other. I started to believe that all would be fine.

Then life intervened for me and I lost track for a little while. By the time I tuned back in, the mood out by the barns had changed a bit.

I started finding...well, I won't even try to be delicate...I started finding body parts.

Everywhere.

At first the back half of a raccoon.

Then most of a second one.

Sometimes they'd be fresh and sometimes not.

A skunk.

A groundhog.

One was the entire wingspan of a chicken. Ugh. I had to run to the coop to count mine, who were thankfully all there.

Usually, the carcasses were just lying out on the ground by the old barns.

Sometimes, I'd see them first from a distance. That sucks, cause what if it's a cat or a lamb? I always have to go check them out to make sure.

Sometimes, I just stumble on them unexpectedly. Now that REALLY sucks, cause, well, lets just say, there are no flutes and whistles in the background when that happens.

The groundhog was left in a stall in the pony barn. Um, thanks?

My apprehension went up a serious notch when I went out to check on the sheep one afternoon and found Devon, one of my Icelandics, sitting in the back pasture with bloody, fly-covered wounds across her rump. Like she'd been pounced on by a fox. The attacker was nowhere to be seen and clearly hadn't followed through with its attack, considering Devon was still sitting there, calmly chewing her cud in a very lifelike manner. I took her back to the barn, cleaned her up, sprayed her for flies, and she was fine in a couple of days, but still. Still. A fox attacked a grown sheep.

I worried about the lambs.

Especially Hamza and Helenka, the two bottle babies. They don't have any adult sheep to look out for them, just each other, and they're not a lot bigger than the foxes.

I started thinking about encouraging the foxes to move on.

I struggled with that idea. From what I gather, baby foxes don't move out of the home den until fall and that's still several months off.

I didn't want to endanger them any more than I wanted to endanger the sheep.

I was still hoping for a Disney ending I guess.

Then I started to notice that the number of kits seemed to have declined. By the end of June I was seeing them much less frequently and I rarely saw more than two at a time. Maybe three.

A couple of days ago, I found, not one, but two different carcasses in the pony pens during morning rounds. They'd both been dead long enough that it was challenging to tell what they were. Raccoon? Groundhog? Fox?

I think they were foxes.

Sunday morning, mama fox (I'm pretty sure it was mama) got hit by a car on the road.

This afternoon I found yet another dead kit in the pasture.

Both yesterday and today, I saw only one fox each day.

Just one.

I wish there was something I could do to save this one, but nature clearly is taking its course.

It looks like I won't need to worry about chasing them away.

But, geez, this is not how I imagined this little adventure playing out.

Worth the wait

March passed with no further fox sightings.

By April, I thought maybe they had moved on after all.

Recently though, I'd started to catch fleeting glimpses again. Usually just the swoosh of a small figure caught out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes dashing for the fence line at the back of the property. Sometimes dashing for the barn.

I wanted to get a picture, even a crummy one, but invariably my phone was dead, or I'd put it down somewhere, or my hands were full, or wet, or she was long gone by the time I got my phone free.

Last week I heard the screams again.

But wait, I say to myself.

I never saw the first litter. You can't be working on a second litter yet, Ms. Fox. Where is my first litter? Where is the litter playing in the spring sunshine? Where is that first litter I was promised? 

Wikipedia promised me. The internet promised me.

I was a little disappointed.

Until this morning as I passed by the old barns to let the sheep out.

Hands free.

Phone charged.  

And lookie there, it's not even mama fox, it's babies! At least three different kits.

In the spring sunshine.

Sparing you the worst of the phone photos, here are a few of one kit. You gotta look close at the last couple to see the tiny little guy.

Snow foxes

I only wish I had a picture.

There are only two things I like about snow.

1) A snow covered ground makes it easy to see where I'm walking at night and 2) a snow covered ground makes it easy to see where others have been walking as well.

We've had very few days or nights of true snow cover this year. In general I'm happy about that, since with the snow usually comes bitter cold and lots of other unpleasantness.

But I have missed the snowlit nights.

That's why I was pleased when, on my way back to the house from feeding the ponies tonight, I realized I could see all the way back to the sheep barn behind the house. Behind the pony barn I could see all three of the old farmstead barns and all the yards around them. The dark shapes of the barns loomed out against the white snow. The distances were all foreshortened and a low ceiling of clouds made everything glow. It felt like being inside a lightbox.

And that's why I couldn't resist sneaking back to the sheep barn just to peek in the barnyard and see if anybody was still up and about. I could see one dark lump standing in the feeder. It turned out to be Brianna, bless her hungry little half-Lincoln heart. She was out in the yard all by herself cleaning up scraps from dinner. I hovered around for a while trying to get a picture of her in the dark with my phone, but she didn't much appreciate my intrusion and after a few minutes declared she didn't really want an audience and hopped down and away.

I turned to go, not quickly mind you, but fast compared to hovering I guess. My movement startled something out by the old barns. Something that started to run. I caught the movement in the corner of my eye, just in time to look up and catch the sight of not one, but two foxes racing back to the big barn.

Not one, but two foxes.

I'd suspected the fox I'd been hearing had moved into the old barn. I've seen tracks. Lots of tracks. Even tracks into and out of the sheep yard. The other morning, I saw the actual fox, not just her tracks, dart around the corner of the old barn and disappear inside it while I was feeding. And I've seen her trotting across the back field at dusk and dawn. Coming and going from hunts I assume. But, I hadn't realized there were two of them. I suppose there will be even more in a few weeks.

If we are lucky, and very careful and watchful, maybe we will see the kits.

And if we are very lucky, and very careful, and very watchful, maybe they will leave the sheep and the lambs that are coming, very much alone. I pray so.

And I need to get a picture.

Fox Scream

So, about that coyote footprint.

The dogs were acting weird this morning during their pre-dawn backyard break. Weird enough that I went outside to see what the deal was. They were lined up at the fence facing the paddocks behind the pony barn, staring into the dark. And from the dark came the creepiest sound I've ever heard. Silence, punctuated by a scream, every 10 or 15 seconds.

Made my heart stop.

There were no other sounds, which just contributed to the freakishness. No skirmishing, no tramping through the leaves or branches, no sheep baaing, or ponies stomping. Just this bizarre scream.

Pictures of coyotes marauding through the alpaca pen came unbidden to mind. Alpacas can make some pretty odd sounds, so I had to cram on my boots and run out to check on the poor guys.

Of course, the pacas were fine, if a little spooked to see me in the predawn dark, so I went back to the house and forgot about it.

Later I happened to mention it to my friend across the street.

She immediately asked, "Did it sound like a girl screaming?"

"Why yes. Yes it did. It sounded JUST like a girl screaming. Did you hear it?"

Turns out she heard it coming from behind her barn a couple of days ago.

It wasn't a coyote.

It was a red fox!

I feel so much better. Of course the tracks up the drive and by the house MUST have been a fox. Not a coyote.

I'm pretty sure a fox is not going to kill my sheep or alpacas.

But now I really want a night cam.