Essays

Wild On The Prairie: Mammals

Gray Fox Behavior
February 3, 2002

Recently at the Gone Native Arboretum a gray fox acted out of character. Here on the Llano Estacado, gray foxes are the most common species of fox, for they are the best adapted to survival in many different habitats. Gray foxes are the only canid in the world that can climb trees. Natural History magazine once published a photograph of a gray fox sitting on the crossbeam of a telephone pole.

Four species of fox live on the southern Llano Estacado -- the only place in the world that has such diversity. It is one of many reasons I am intensely proud of my homeland. I consider myself lucky to have had opportunities to interact with one of the species, and wish that I could do so with the other species. Red foxes live in the alleys of town, in vacant lots, and in old caliche pits. Swift foxes live with prairie dogs, and kit foxes live in the sand dune country catching kangaroo rats.

Observation of an animal’s behavior teaches us about its relationship to others of its own species, as well as its relationships to the other members of the ecological community, including us. In contemplating the behavior of an animal, a person can also learn about how to learn.

I had just emerged from a secluded garden and stopped to survey an area adjacent to it, attempting to visualize the development of a fire-pit and storytelling arena. Lost in thought, I did not move for several minutes until movement caught my eye when a gray fox walked into view. He immediately noticed me and froze. He stared at me, appearing uncertain as to what I was. He turned his head, lifted his nose at a 45 degree angle, and opened his mouth, inhaling deeply. Sniffing twice in one direction, he then turned to the opposite direction and again sniffed twice.

The fox then faced me and took one step in my direction, but immediately thought better of it and pulled his foot back. He then immediately stepped forward with the other foot, but pulled it abruptly back, too. After staring at my shape, he took three steps to his right, stopped, turned around, took six steps to his left, and stopped again. Finally, the fox returned to his original position, repeated the inhaling in both directions, and then again stood staring at me.

This time he remained frozen, as I did. I began thinking of my last observation of him. About a week before, I had been on the bird observation tower for ten minutes, looking off to the northeast, sitting quietly, trying to spot a school bus arriving from Sweetwater for a tour of the Arboretum. The fox walked into view forty feet away, but froze when he walked into a breeze carrying the scent of my morning bath soap. With a worried look, he circled among the mesquites, twice disappearing from sight to my right, and twice to my left, before finally departing to my left. After a few minutes I heard a high pitched whine, and when I turned he was 75 feet to the south. My movement caused him to fade into the Arizona Cypresses and Eastern Red Cedars of the Ceremonial Grove.

I was wondering if the fox was thinking of that earlier encounter as he stood staring at me. "Hey, fox, here I am again." My words did not elicit a response, so I barked at him. Again he stepped toward me, this time coming five steps in my direction. I moved, figuring that the encounter would be brought to an immediate halt. Not so -- the fox merely froze again, and then spun on his heel to repeat his earlier maneuvers of moving to the right and to the left, and performing the double inhalation routine before returning to his original position. The fox then moved over to a large pad prickly pear under a grove of black locusts.

"Is it a female, and does she have a den under the prickly pear?" I wondered. But the fox returned to its first location and sat down, staring at me. Mimicking him, I took a step left, then two to the right, and returned to my original spot. It did not move. I repeated the dance step. There was still no reaction from the little fox. I sat down.

Several minutes passed. I began worrying that the fox might be rabid, so I reached for a two-foot long, dead mesquite branch, and stood up. Animals have an uncanny ability to read body language and interpret intent. Sensing danger, the fox immediately ducked under an Arizona Cypress and stopped to look toward me again. Something caught its eye off to my right. Again the fox sat down, glancing back and forth from me to whatever it had noticed. I looked in that direction and saw my oldest cat walk into view at the top of the sand hill garden’s plantings of Sand Penstemon and Purple Prairie Clover.

The fox rose and slowly walked off out of sight, angling away from both of its perceived threats. The cat noticed and came to me, meowing loudly, presumably telling me all about the fox. I told her I wished I had had a camera.

Why does the gray fox climb? With what other animals does it compete for food and other resources? What animals might eat it? In which habitats within our bioregion do those competitors and predators live? If a student spends a little time thinking about the questions, and a little bit of time researching the answers, the subject matter is retained for a much longer period. This is a basic technique of the pedagogy of ecological literacy -- the glory of natural history education is that it requires active processes such as observation and bibliophilic research, developing the analytical skills necessary to survive in today's complex world.