Summer 2008
Driving home late at night the car headlights picked out a mother fox and three kits (cubs) at the side of the road. I stopped and backed up so the kits stayed in the light. One crouched down and disappeared. The other two gray/tan furry bundles stood there staring at the lights. The mother, looking disgusted, walked off up the road leaving the kits alone.
Like their name, fox kits look half kitten and half puppy - totally cute. I wondered why the mother kept walking. Was she trying to lead me away or was she just fed up after a long day with the kids? When I drove up the road, there she was, striding on ahead about a quarter mile away. Orianne arrived home a little later and saw them reunited, so the kits must have caught up with her.
Next day, I found the honeysuckle I had grown from a cutting and planted out, was eaten off down to the ground. Like one of those silent movies, I actually did a double-take when I went into the garden and noticed the whole 12” plant was missing. I knew it was a victim of one of the many chipmunks or ground squirrels we have romping around our deck. So I set out a “Havahart” live trap baited with peanut butter.
Nothing happened for a couple of days until one night I was wakened by a loud jangling noise. The trap is three feet long with 1” square mesh - quite heavy; it should not make that much noise with a small animal inside. When I went out onto the deck, the trap had been move ten feet and a light brown rodent was dead inside, its head stuck through the mesh and half eaten off.
I put the trap in the shed for the night and next morning examined its contents. It was definitely not a chipmunk. The long furry tail and large mouse-like body showed it to be a Bushy-Tailed Woodrat - a pretty looking animal with large ears and soft fur, quite unlike the normal rat. This is what I think happened: the Woodrat was caught and tried to escape through the mesh; the fox caught its head; the fox then dragged the trap around as it tried to pull the woodrat out.
My attempts to catch the plant thief had misfired and claimed an innocent victim. I put the body of the woodrat out on the mountainside so the fox could come later to collect its meal. A couple days passed and I put the trap out again in a different place. I caught the thief -- a Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrel. He looks like a larger version of a chipmunk but with a relatively shorter tail and no stripes on the face. I transported him safely down the mountain and set him free.
