Striking A Balance

By Mike Fitzgerald

The neighbour down the road was adamant that the best thing to do was to get rid of them before they became a problem. I stood next to his pickup truck while his wife and kids awed at the fox standing behind me no more than fifteen feet away.

His concerns were of children being bitten or badly mauled by the fox, which more than likely didn’t have any merit, but to him they were very real. However, over the course of the last five years that the fox had been around, three of which involved her having a den full of kits underneath our roadside deck, she’d never once been anything close to what could be described as a problem. My motto had been concise – leave them alone, and we can all get along.

The neighbour eventually pulled away after shaking his head incredulously, and I returned to my chair where the book I was previously reading awaited me, all the while momma fox went about her business, most of which involved playing with the kits in the spring sunlight.

As I mentioned earlier, the fox had been hanging around for the better part of the last five years. I don’t know her back story or why she has warmed up to us here, but it’s not uncommon for me to be lounging on the lawn in the shade during a July afternoon and see her only a few paces away also laying down in the shade, watching me before she dozes off. During the winter when I venture out to my ice hut in the dark before dawn, she follows along on the walk out sometimes.

She looks very different from her mate – a skinny little fox that squints when she is seemingly comfortable, with a small white patch under her head, whereas the male is a handsome wild looking creature with more white on his neck, her orange tint much paler on his face. He doesn’t share the same feelings about being near humans as the female does, preferring to dip into the woods across the road the moment he detects my presence.

At the expense of using the underside of our deck as a place to raise her young, this relationship has been mutually beneficial over the years. For one, when one of our snap traps kills one of the rogue field mice that finds its way into the cottage, the fox makes short work of it afterwards. We no longer have any chipmunks or squirrels that dare come onto the property thanks to her cunning style of hunting, and in turn, their shenanigans provides untold hours of entertainment throughout the year.

While the neighbours down the road might be undecided, most of the permanent residents here don’t mind the foxes being around at all – in fact for the most part they prefer it. Afterall, the fox is our neighbour as well, keeping the cottontails out of the gardens, the chipmunks at bay – maybe just keeping everything in balance as a whole.

All this to say that sometimes striking a balance in nature means tipping your hat to the predator, and as long as the fox keeps doing what its genetically predisposed to do, it’s rent for the makeshift fox apartment under the deck is paid, as far as I’m concerned.