Our Little Foxy Friend

I've mentioned that I take the dogs out several times a week to the jebels at one edge of camp. It's a fascinating if austere landscape.

Since January we've been crossing paths with a female red fox. Red foxes in Saudi Arabia are more greyish-tan with black tipped fur than they are red in color. But they have that distinctive white tip to their tail and other markings on face, chest, and feet that are consistent with the red fox species. They do have somewhat larger ears and smaller bodies than red foxes I've seen in the US. While there are two or three other species of fox that live in Saudi Arabia, including the desert fox, they all live in habitats west of the Eastern Province. (Two good links about red foxes are here and here.)

(Most animals that scrape out a living in the desert are smaller than their counterparts in greener, wetter areas. The sparrows here are simply tiny and I've mentioned how the feral cats are also small. This is due of course to limits on food resources and extreme heat in the summer even though all of these animals make a comparatively decent living in and around the edges of camp.)

The fox terriers found Foxy Lady's first den rather easily. She was in it at the time (I could bend down and see her in there) so the dogs were just over the top with excitement. For weeks after their discovery, Mimi tried to pull me bodily back to that spot.

This discovery was the tip of the iceberg for the terriers. They suddenly realized that creatures in the desert live in holes! Who would have thought such a thing was so! They now are quite thorough in investigating all holes, cracks, depressions, any sort of feature that could hold something of interest. I can tell when they find an occupied hole. I let them sniff and paw around for a bit then pull them off. They are surprisingly systematic in rechecking holes. They've found places where wild bees build hives along with the usual suspects of lizards, snakes, small rodents, and probably large beetles. Once they found a crack occupied by a terrified feral cat. I have no idea how it squeezed in there.

Anyway, back to Foxy Lady. I knew she was a female because I saw her squat to urinate. We were sighting her at least once a week for a month or so and I noticed a dramatic increase in fox poop in certain locations. We also started finding remnants of her kills, usually the stupid ring-necked doves and once what I thought was probably a lizard. The dogs would spend a long time sniffing these spots.

I would often see her one or two jebels over. At that distance she was never in a huge hurry to run away. However, one afternoon we took a new scrambling route up the side of a jebel, reached the top and walked straight over to the cliff on the other side to look into the wadi (the dogs seem to enjoy gazing out across the distance like this). Just as we came to the edge, I looked down to see Foxy Lady taking a luxurious sand bath, rolling in a patch of sand about 10 feet below us. It was a very windy day and she didn't hear or smell us coming. But the second our heads popped over the edge, she shot away down then across the wadi and up and over the next jebel. Mimi almost came unglued with excitement and Harry managed to climb down to the ledge in chase before I called him back.

Despite all of these close encounters, we continued to spot her about once a week. I noticed that she looked a bit thicker in March and suspected that she was pregnant. It was about this time that the dogs decided that her first den was no longer occupied. They still like to nose around it but they know it is empty and are quickly ready to move on.

About three weeks ago, the dogs stumbled across her new den. It was an old hole in the side of a wadi--we all knew the hole was there, but there were fresh signs of occupancy. I managed to restrain the dogs long enough to get a look at the tracks going in and out. Based on the dogs' behavior and the size of the hole and the tracks, I was pretty sure we had found her den. It was in a much better location than the first one so I didn't let the dogs mess around with it.

The dogs and I were out again this last weekend, a lovely early morning trip on Thursday. Even by 6am it is now getting rather hot and the sun is well up. I was toodling along and casually thought to myself, hmm, I haven't seen Foxy Lady in a while. Then I turned to see her silhouetted on the top of the next jebel. The dogs didn't see her. I called Harry a little closer to me and turned Mimi away from that direction. Good thing I did. As soon as I moved, Foxy Lady shot over the top of the jebel away from us.

And suddenly two light tan fox kits took off from the ledge just below her, leaping and skidding their way down the cliff into the wadi below! When they stopped, I literally couldn't see them--they blended perfectly with the rocks.

Fortunately, neither dog saw any of this. I was able to watch the kits until they dropped into the channel at the bottom and out of sight.

In retrospect, I think Foxy Lady was in her second den with the kits when the dogs found it three weeks ago. That would explain why they became even more excited than usual.

Based on the information in the two links above, it appears that red foxes adapt well to living among humans. I have asked around and it doesn't appear the foxes are getting into people's trash but it seems likely that they are foraging in our trash bins nonetheless even if they aren't dragging trash bags down the street.

I hope Foxy Lady and her two kits continue to survive. It's nice to know that the dogs and I can share that little corner of camp with her.