Speaking of Wildlife

Introducing Scamp, the red fox, SOW’s newest resident

— by Jamie Proctor

Welcome to the twenty-eighth column introducing the residents of Speaking of Wildlife: Ontario animals that can’t be released back into the wilderness due to permanent injuries or over-habituation to humans. Today we’ll be looking at one of the freshest and funniest-smelling faces at the centre: Scamp the red fox.

The red fox might seem small and slight compared to its cousins in the genus Canis (wolves, coyotes, and more), but all size is relative: they’re actually the largest true foxes (genus Vulpes) on the planet, and are more than happy to bully their smaller relatives if they’re after the same food.

However, the really staggering numbers aren’t found in their body mass, but in their geographic ubiquity: they’re the most widely distributed of all living carnivorans. In North America, they can be found in every single province and territory in Canada (including several places arctic foxes would really rather they wouldn’t be in) all the way down to the southern extensions of the United States. In Eurasia you can find them from Spain to Japan and almost everywhere in between; and they maintain a significant presence in northern Africa, all before you even leave their native range (their presence in Australia, alas, is invasive).

If you’re sick of red foxes, you have few options but to move to South America; or Antarctica, but that applies to most things you can be sick of except penguins. They’re – accordingly, obviously – flexible in both habitat and diet, eating vast amounts of small vertebrates (up to about rabbit-ish size is the usual maximum), invertebrates, fruit (a LOT of it when available), and seeds according to seasonal abundance, which they find with alert vision, keen scent (not to be confused with their own scent, which is intense and pretty gross), and a truly excellent sense of hearing.

They are happy in open spaces and woodlands alike and do very well in urban environments, similar to racoons or coyotes, fitting into the green gaps and suburbia. If they don’t like the neighbourhood, they are perfectly capable of upping stakes and moving. Young foxes dispersing from their parents’ territories (the kits are diligently raised by both adults, sometimes with help from older siblings that aren’t quite ready to head out on their own yet) can travel over a hundred kilometres if they feel it necessary.

Few things can truly put red foxes down for the count. Despite being hunted for harassing poultry (avoid this if you dislike pests: few things devour rodents and insects as avidly as a red fox), trapped for their fur, prevented from denning by coyotes, and occasionally targeted as a rabies vector, red foxes remain abundant across most of their enormous range and Ontario is no exception.

Scamp – through bad planning, bad luck, or both – ran afoul of a broken femur at a relatively young age and was brought into a rehabilitation center to recover from what would have been an otherwise life-threatening injury. While doing so, he also was diagnosed with bad eyesight and the occasional seizure before completing the royal flush of unreleasability by displaying poor social compatibility with his peers and overfondness of human company.

Accordingly, he has come to live at Speaking of Wildlife, where he has received further human socialization (and is slowly learning that human skin is less resilient in the face of playbiting than fox fur), an enclosure to himself, a toy monkey to wrassle, a wheel to run in, and walls to kickflip off of. He appears to be pleased as punch about all of this and is very eager to make many ridiculous noises telling you about it, when he isn’t sleeping, which is almost never, since besides being a growing boy, Scamp, like most red foxes, tends towards the nocturnal.

Like everyone else on this planet, I’ve only had the opportunity to know Scamp for a couple of months, but what I’ve seen, I like: he’s active, enthusiastic, and ridiculous in both behaviour and vocalizations. Furthermore, he – like so many other young canids – is composed entirely of sticks and triangles, which makes him a silly shape that is very pleasant to look at. I gave him a chicken drumstick and he was happy, what more could either of us want?

It is cosmically correct and good that his default mode of movement is to scamper!

If you would like to meet Scamp and the other wonderful animal residents at Speaking of Wildlife, in Severn, contact SOW through the website today, to book a tour! www.speakingofwildlife.ca.