Look who's been eating our ferals' food!

[Bertha Venation]

We put food out on the front porch daily for three feral cats, whom we've named Charley, Ringtail, and Domino. A couple of weeks ago, this lovely little mommy began to partake of the buffet:




We can only guess she has cubs in a den somewhere nearby (we can see she's nursing). She shows no sign of disease. As soon as her cubs are grown, I'm sure we'll never see her again.

I love life!

Oh -- this li'l guy is hungry, too:



edit: I just learned they're cubs, not kits.

[ET Awful]

1. She's purty :)

Hopefully the bird can evade her and the feral kitties :)

[Bertha Venation]

18. Mrs. V. saw "purty" and asked, "Is he from East Tennessee?"

LOL That's where she's from. How 'bout you? ;)

[ET Awful]

22. No, I'm from California . . .

But I always liked the word . . . it just has a cool sound to it :).

I had stopped using it for years until I heard Ani Difranco use it several years back when telling the story of her first arrival in NYC and describing the overly made-up prostitutes :).

[La Lioness Priyanka]

2. ohh my god! the cuteness that it your life!

i am green w.envy

[BlackVelvetElvis]

3. Great shots!

I envy you guys.

[Bertha Venation]

10. I credit the camera.

Nikon Coolpix 880.

I don't mean to make anyone envious. We are richly, richly blessed, and immensely grateful.

[Beware the Beast Man]

4. Wow- she must be pretty tame

To come up to the deck like that- or maybe she's used to being fed by the neighbors, too-if you have any.

[ewagner]

5. A Fox???

Wow! You're so lucky to have such a distinguished visitor!

The Bluejays around here are a kick. When they're happy the call they make sounds like "toy-bird". They're totally unafraid of me.

[supernova]

6. Wow! I've never seen a fox

on the porch! :wow:

And since when do birds eat cat food? :shrug: LOL!

Thanks for all the adorable animal pix.

[m-jean03]

13. The crows and jays ALWAYS ate my outdoor kitty's food

(She "came with the house," & my mom's allergic to cats, so we had to keep her outside. Fluffy died several years ago).

And they were AGGRESSIVE about it, too!!
Poor Fluffy, they'd yell and squawk at her and act like it was theirs. :grr:

[DarkPhenyx]

7. Very Cool!

We get foxes here too, but they are much better at hiding than yours is. :) They are beautiful animals though.

[Lisa0825]

8. WOW! she is SO beautiful!!! Thanks for posting!:-)

[demnan]

9. How cute!!

At my Mom's house she used to have possums visit and partake of the catfood put out for our feral guests.

[Bertha Venation]

12. we get possums, too, and raccoons -- and, of course, squirrels

Possums are the ugliest critters on God's green earth. I love them. Did you know they like sweets? I've been putting out stale marshmallows for them, leftover from T-giving. They love 'em.

[aquart]

11. You've got a fox!

We had a fox, but it was kind of ratty and beat up and didn't come again after a while.

We have a regular circuit of raccoons, an occasional possum, and the odd duck, chickens, and even a goose eating the ferals food.

[Flaxbee]

14. Wow, she's just lovely.

What a beatiful creature. Great photos, too! What the heck time of day did you take these? I usually see foxes around here at dawn or dusk, rarely in such clear light.

[Bertha Venation]

17. I took those photos about two hours ago -- apx 11:30 EDT

We're in Southern Maryland. It's a gray, overcast day. The front of our house faces the South, so we always have good light coming in from there.

I think hunger is driving her out -- to very easy food -- in the middle of the day. If you've ever had a nursing cat or dog, I'm sure you've seen how very thin they get, no matter how much they eat.

[MissMillie]

15. Be grateful

I was feeding a stray cat on my back porch a couple of years back, and one night I went out to leave the house and a skunk was eating out of the dishes.

That's a pretty fox. Nice picture.

[LynneSin]

16. We should name your fox!!!

How about Foxy Gray!!!!

Since obviously she is not a brown fox, she looks gray in the picture

[Bertha Venation]

20. She actually is a Gray Fox.

I wanted to name her Aunt Letty. A favorite author anthropomorphizes animals in some of her books, and there's a fox named Aunt Letty. But Mrs. V. has an Aunt Lettie, and she said Aunt Lettie would not like having a fox named for her.

I like Foxy Gray. Any other suggestions? Hmmm...

[LynneSin]

24. Then Foxy Gray it is

Because she's one hot mamma!!!!!

[Taverner]

29. ITS OSCAR

Once again, he's morphed into something different

[liberalitch]

19. Wild life rocks!!!!

Are you in a very rural area?

[Bertha Venation]

21. semi-rural

We're 35 miles southeast of Washington, DC, on a peninsula, just about smack in the middle of the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay. We're on a street that looks about like any street in a regular tract anywhere, except the lots are much bigger than most places. Adn we're not in a big development -- we're just one long street, with a couple of small off-shoots. Nothing immediately around us but forest, and on one side, a small farm.

We're surrounded for acres by forest. It's wonderful. (Getting less so because "development" is creeping in :grr: but we'll enjoy what we have while it lasts.)

[geniph]

23. Poor little skinny mommy!

Those babies are sucking her dry! I think I'd put out a couple cans of Alpo at the time she usually shows, she looks like she could use the extra calories. They get so thin when they're nursing!

I dearly love foxes. Well, not around my chickens, but other than that, I love foxes. The best way to keep a fox (or raccoon) from your chickens is a big bad-ass rooster, anyway. It's why Mother Nature equipped roosters with enough testosterone to drive Mike Tyson into 'roid rage.

[Reciprocity]

25. Your fox was prettier than all the pictures of foxes I saw on Google!

What do they look like?
Red foxes are small (10-14 lbs.) dog like animals with a sharp pointed nose, erect ears and a bushy tail. Although they can come in colors from black to blonde, they are usually red, with black legs and a white tipped tail.

Where are they found?
Active during the day and night, red foxes inhabit the entire state of Maryland. Like many other wildlife species, they have become "urbanized" and do quite will in urban and suburban environments.

What do they eat?
Red foxes are omnivorous, which means they eat both plants and animals. Their varied diet includes insects, birds, mice, snakes, rabbits, nuts, berries and fruits.

What other kind of foxes live in Maryland?
The gray fox is the only other fox in Maryland. Gray foxes are smaller (8-12 lbs.), gray in color with a black tipped tail.

Foxes are basically solitary animals except for the breeding season in winter through mid-summer when mates and their young stay together. Foxes are most active in the evening and very early morning, but are often seen out during daylight. Red foxes will either dig their own burrows, or use an abandoned groundhog burrow for a nesting den. The gray fox usually makes its den in hollow trees, logs or brush piles. Unusual noises at night can often be explained by the foxes wide variety of vocal calls, including barks, screams, howls, yaps, growls or sounds similar to a hiccup. The high-pitched scream can be especially disturbing when heard at night. It often is mistaken for the scream of a person

[iconoclastic cat]

26. Wow! Beautiful.

She wouldn't try to take out one of the cats, would she?

[Mrs. Venation]

27. No, She Doesn't Bother Them

Bertha and I keep two bowls of food on the porch. Bertha has seen the fox and a cat eating at the same time. The fox ignored the cat.

We are so blessed to live here. We love the wildlife and the trees (our house has trees on three sides). Nature is so lovely, and we try to disturb as little natural habitat as possible. There is no way we will remove the trees and replace them with a grassy lawn.

We also feed songbirds; we have a flock of American Goldfinches that feed here regularly. I really love the woodpeckers, too. One of my favorite summer sounds is the evening call of a whippoorwill; it reminds me of summer nights in the wilderness in Tennessee.

Life is good.

Mrs. Venation

[BlackVelvetElvis]

28. That's why I envy you guys

I love when Bertha puts up the nature pics or talks about what's outside the door.
I live in a rural area that is being overrun very quickly and I love wild animals and birds. They are disappearing fast.
That fox must be pretty hungry to come on your porch and ignore your cat. I hope she and her cubs will fare well.

[Forkboy]

30. What a beautiful animal

those are great pics! Thanks for sharing them!

[GoddessOfGuinness]

31. Great pics!

I'm surprised she didn't run off before you could catch her!
I love foxes. I've seen them in my neighborhood as well as in the park down the street.

[Lorien]

32. What an exquisite creature!

I use to watch gray foxes hunting and playing in my studio's parking lot in the wee hours, but I've never been THAT close to one! She's a stunner! Aren't they the most graceful and delicate things? I admit, I'm envious; I just get Blue jays, cardinals, brown thrashers, raccoons and possums at my cat's dish. I really do enjoy the 'coons, though they haven't been around for a few days (I'm worried too; a small forest was leveled behind my home by developers, now I fear my coonies were leveled with it). :-(