Once again, nothing.  Sporadically over the past few weeks I’d been scouting red fox dens that were active in previous years, but so far this spring I hadn’t found any definitive signs of recent activity.  Disappointed, I was walking back to my car when a fox appeared by the side of the road.  Alert and wary but comfortable enough to trot right past me, the fox was heading directly towards the den I’d just checked.

My attempt to follow stealthily from a distance was not very stealthy, unsurprisingly, and the fox gave the den a wide berth before pausing at the edge of a treeline to assess my presence.  (I wish I could have known all the factors that were being considered as it stared me down!)  Apparently concluding that I posed no threat, the fox ran to the den and made a soft, barely audible grunting noise that triggered a rowdy mob of the of the smallest, cutest kits I’d ever seen to burst out of the den and engulf their mom.

 

 

 

 

I hardly knew what to do with myself.  A rush of competing priorities left me almost paralyzed.  I wanted photos, of course, but I didn’t want to disturb the foxes.  I wanted to avoid being seen from the road, which risked drawing too much attention to the den.  And a big part of me just wanted to stand there dumbstruck and absorb every second of the remarkable scene.

 

 

 

I watched as the fox mom casually nursed and groomed and played with her tiny kits.  Every now and then she gave me a look that I interpreted as, “See what I have to deal with here?”  She clearly had her hands (paws) full.  Eventually the mom left and the kits vanished back into the den.  I lingered there for a while, amazed and grateful.

 

 

For the rest of the month I returned to the den almost every day.  My emotions were mixed.  It was a profound, ongoing joy to be able to watch this family on a regular basis.  But I knew that many (probably most) of the kits would not survive to adulthood, and the loss of each one would be gutting.  I also struggled with the fact that exposure to humans is simply not good for wild animals.  I did my best to minimize my impact, but every visit to the den contributed to their habituation.  It was selfish.

And sometimes I got too close.  Every now and then, for example, the mom would run towards me with the kits right on her heels, and I wasn’t as quick as I should have been to tear myself away from photos and back off to a more reasonable distance.

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually I counted seven kits.  Five of them looked normal and nearly identical (although one of the “normies” did have lighter coloring and another had a slightly droopy right ear), but two of the kits looked much less developed than the others.  One was significantly smaller and had darker coloring, and the other had a prominent white chest patch.  Runts, I wondered?  A local photographer named Deby, one of the very few people I ran into by the den, thought the kits looked so different that they must be from multiple litters.  That didn’t seem likely to me, but apparently red fox moms sometimes do share a den and raise their kits together.

 

 

 

 

I’d been watching the fox mom and kits for about a week when my own mom came for what turned out to be a great visit.  I wanted her to experience the foxes, but it wasn’t as if they appeared on a regular schedule – sometimes I staked out the den for hours without seeing any activity.  So I crossed my fingers as we concealed ourselves in some trees and prepared to wait.  No more than 10 minutes later the fox mom returned to the den.  The rambunctious kits spilled out to nurse and play for almost an hour.  It was easily the best show I’d witnessed until that point, and sharing it with my mom made it even better.

 

 

 

 

My mom’s good luck extended beyond foxes.  The afternoon she and my niece Kate first arrived, a pine marten appeared in our yard.  It was the first one my mom had ever seen.  And in Yellowstone we spotted most of the usual wildlife suspects – moose, bison (including lots of red dogs), elk, deer, coyotes, eagles, ospreys, sandhill cranes, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, bears, and more.

 

 

 

 

 

My family time continued the next weekend when I met Kate and her boyfriend Ian, my sister Ann and her husband Dan, and my other niece Elizabeth and her two kids for a really nice picnic at Mammoth.  Ann, Dan and Elizabeth were visiting Kate in Bozeman, and they were nice enough to meet me halfway for lunch.  That night, Elizabeth and her kids stayed with us in Silver Gate on their way back to Colorado.  It was great to see everyone.

 

 

Back at the fox den, the white-chested runt emerged as a particular favorite of mine.  He or she was gracious enough to strike photogenic poses more frequently than the others.

 

 

 

 

 

Seeing the fox family once would have been a thrill, so it was truly special to be able to track the kits as they matured incrementally over time.  Based on what I’ve read about the way foxes develop, the kits were probably about five or six weeks old when I first saw them.  They nursed regularly, they didn’t seem interested in solid food, and they almost never ventured out of the den unless one of their parents was around.  Two weeks later they were nursing less often, eating some of the solid food their parents delivered (rodents, birds, marmots), and making increasingly more adventurous forays away from the den, even without parental supervision.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One morning near the end of the month I happened to be driving by the den area when I ran into a traffic jam.  It turned out a fox parent had escorted some of the kits from their original den to a log pile they used as a temporary den last year (after their original den flooded).  The log pile was very visible from the road and cars were stopped in both directions.  Over the next couple of days the parents relocated the rest of the family except for one kit, a normie that had somehow injured its leg.

The family spent a handful of days creating hectic scenes at the log pile.  Crowds of photographers gathered at the side of the road and traffic was frequently stopped, forcing the park to line the area with orange cones.  I sometimes saw the fox mom feeding the injured normie at the original den, but those sightings eventually stopped and I’m not sure if the poor kit ever rejoined the others.

 

 

And then one day the entire family just vanished.  I spent a lot of time wandering around the area, assuming I’d stumble across the foxes in a new den somewhere, but I never found them.  Not long before the family moved to the log pile I saw a pine marten prowling around their original den area – could that have played a role?  Or did the mom finally realize how dangerous it was to raise a bunch of kits so close to a road?  Whatever the reason and wherever they went, I just hoped the family was healthy and safe.