No Squirrel for Breakfast

We pick up our story with our fox having chased a squirrel up one of the Habitat’s dogwood trees. After 15 minutes of staring at one another, the squirrel makes his move. After descending down the tree to about 6 feet off the ground, the squirrel first jumped to a nearby azalea bush, jumped again, and hit the ground running. The fox was immediately up and running. Unfortunately, both animals were then disappeared on the side of the house and beyond my view. I assume that the squirrel’s goal was to make it to one of the 50-plus foot trees that are about 25 feet from the dogwood. I was betting that the fox would enjoy a squirrel breakfast. However, the azalea is wide enough that it probably caused the fox to have to lose time running around it.

In less than 30 seconds, our fox was back in view heading for the brush – without his squirrel breakfast (see the first photo). While we have no photos (ever) of a successful squirrel kill, we do have 3 separate and independent observations of a chase followed by the fox walking away with a squirrel in his mouth. But, not on this recent day.

But what followed was totally unexpected. As soon as the fox was off the lawn and into the brush, he raised his leg and began urinating (see the second and third photo) – look for the urine stream – remember that if you click on the photo you will get an enlarged version of the photo. In the fourth photo, our fox is lowering his leg and checking his surrounding before retiring into the thick brush. I can only assume that he was marking his territory. Just when you think you have seen it all in the Habitat, something new happens.