| by Clarence Barrett A couple of years ago, some people showed up at the Cheticamp (Nova Scotia) Visitor Centre inquiring where the fox den was located at the MacIntosh Brook campground. Since the park doesn't keep a registry of fox dwellings, the attendants were unable to oblige with an answer, but the visitors persisted, wondering if there might be someone else available who could tell them. The attendant wondered why they wished to know the whereabouts of the den. Pointing to his stockinged feet, one of the visitors replied, "Because he's got our shoes!" The unsuspecting campers had left their shoes on a picnic table overnight and a fox had reportedly run off with them. It wasn't the first complaint park staff had received about pilfering foxes, nor the last. The following summer a lady appeared at my door (I was stationed across the highway from the campground) to tell me that the fox had run off with her little boy's boot, (The child was not inside the boot at the time.) I went over to look for the boot in the woods adjacent to the campground and found the previous year's collection of Nikes and Birkenstocks scattered amongst the trees. A fox with a footwear fetish. This fox had been hanging around the area for over a year, attracted by handouts from campers and just about every tour bus that made a pit stop there. I'd sometimes find him sitting on my back step, ever hopeful that I'd break down and give him something to eat. After numerous reports from visitors, and complaints from anxious parents, it was decided that it would be in the fox's best interest to change his address. So I set up a cage that we had used to capture coyotes, about a meter tall and wide, and 2 meters long. It had a trap door that worked like a guillotine, triggered by a wire attached to a baited clip inside the cage. I set the trap in my back yard beside a trail the fox was accustomed to taking through the grass, but--no luck. He'd walk by it with a look on his face as much as to say "Do you think I just fell off the turnip truck?" One - nothing for the fox. After a week of this I dragged the cage across the highway to the campground and set it up there. The fox had just had a scoff of Cheesies and sandwiches and goodness knows what else from a crowd of tourists who seemed oblivious to a very large sign which forbade the feeding of wildlife. I waited for the bus to go, knowing that as sure as there's poop in a cat something would go awry if I tried anything with anyone around-Murphy's Corollary, you know: "The probability of something going wrong is inversely proportional to its desirability." I got a bunch of wieners and tied them in an onion bag and hung it from the clip. The fox sat down a few feet away, watching with half-closed eyes. When I finished rigging it up, I walked away a little piece and waited. The fox yawned with an air of disdain, and lay down. Eventually I was able to coax him as far as the cage door but he still wouldn't go in. So I thought I'd try spreading pieces of food along the floor of the cage to see if had follow them right to the trigger. I crawled into the cage to get some wieners off the clip. (You know what's coming). I pulled too hard on the bait bag, the door came down behind me, I was inside the cage, and the fox was outside looking in. And there was no way to open the door from the inside. Score: two - nothing for the fox. I tried to reach a twig that was lying on the ground a few inches away so I could lift the latch. No matter how hard I pushed my fingers through the mesh I couldn't reach it, and the fox stood there licking the hot dog grease off my fingers. I prayed, "Please don't let a tour bus come by now," I thought of what I was going to say if anyone pulled in. "It's a new concept in wildlife management, folks, a little too technical to explain, but we're on the cutting edge of animal behaviour research here, and it's essential that we have complete solitude: By the way, could you pass me that stick before you leave?" I had an awful vision of Bob Saggitt (America's Funniest Videos) introducing North America's prime time TV viewers to a clip on wildlife management in Canada's national parks. One of the wardens asked me later if I had my radio, Right, like I was going to call one of them to come and get me out! I finally jerked the cage over close enough to get the stick, nearly tipping it over in the process, and after a while was able to poke the stick around a corner of the cage and lift the latch. By this time I was mad enough to run the fox down on foot except that I'd probably have lost him in the woods. I propped the cage door up with a stick. Kneeling beside it I threw scraps of food near the entrance. He still wouldn't go in. He was coming closer and closer to the edge, though. "One more inch," I thought, "and I've got you." Well, he took that extra inch, I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, fired him into the cage and kicked the stick out from under the door. I had him! I loaded the cage on the back of the truck, covered it with a tarp and headed for the back country. We drove to an isolated spot on the other side of the park (if he decided he still wanted his fill of junk food, he wasn't going to be my problem). I hauled the cage off the truck, opened the door and bade him get lost. After the rough treatment he got being tossed into the cage, and the bumpy ride across the park, I though he'd make a bolt for the hills. Instead, non-plussed, he walked part way through the open door, then turned around and began to pick up the wieners from the floor. After getting two or three in his mouth he tried to pick up some more but the first ones kept dropping out. When he got what he could, he walked to the door, stepped outside and for the next ten minutes he walked around the woods at the edge of the clearing with the wieners dangling out of his face, looking for a place to stash them. He walked by the cage and he walked by me without any apparent concern about the possibility of being tossed back into the cage. I think he would have ridden back in the cab if he thought he'd be fed. Eventually he disappeared into the woods. I haven't seen him since. I wish him happy hunting. |
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