Fox and rabbit say good night to each other.
For many years, our farm has also been home to wild red foxes. Not only do they roam here, they also give birth to their puppies and use our garage as their nursery. They knowingly have three different dens – but there could well be more as they are masters of hide and seek.
Every year, around mid-March, the female fox mama, Fähe, moves into our depot. Over the years, she has created a structure above the garage using the 100 old fruit crates that were there. It is fascinating to see how she has perfected this by biting through the fruit crates and thus creating escape routes, vistas and small corridors for her family.
In recent years, however, we have often experienced that the little puppies fall down between the wooden beams as soon as the parents go hunting and walk around helplessly – that’s why we put the little ones back in with the help of a towel, even if it was very cute carrying the burrow back, a puppy gate attached. Now they can romp around and discover the world safely in their mother’s absence. Fighting, romping, eating and patting on their parents’ noses is part of the daily routine for the little ones in the building – thanks to our night vision camera, we can follow this every year and look forward to this time.
Even if foxes are very caring parents and therefore the father also helps to raise the little ones, it often happens that he is shot or run over. However, because they are omnivores, even a single female has the opportunity to find enough food on our property. They also keep the rat and mouse population in check. As soon as the puppies are big enough, they go on outings together outside the burrow, which get longer and bigger until one day they never come back and go on their own way.
But what do you need our help for?
Last year, for example, our foxes had to struggle with mange – a mite disease that itches and thus leads to massive hair loss and thus to the death of the animals in the cold winter months. By helping and gathering knowledge from various fox sanctuaries, hunters and veterinarians, we gave the foxes a cure for the deadly blight. We ordered this from England after a long research, as it was one of the few remedies that does not lead to death in unaffected animals after ingestion. To the delight of all of us, the foxes accepted the remedy and were able to recover. From this point on, the hunter who is responsible for the adjoining forest also took the remedy for affected foxes outside of our property.
We are very grateful for the good cooperation and a hunter who is concerned about the well-being of the forest animals and only takes up the gun in extreme emergencies.
Even with our badger, which hid in our barn for a few days, he stood by us with advice and action – instead of listening to the tip of other hunters and shooting him, he came through suitable food, water and time back on its own feet and was able to move on stronger.
Not only fox and rabbit say good night here, but also Bernd, our tomcat, has already met a young fox who wanted to play with him. But Bernd gave him to understand, in a cat-typical way, about the young fox’s guiding nature: I don’t feel like it.
