Wildlife, residents too close
- Thread starter Teegate
- Start date
It is frustrating sometimes to read these articles. Fox should be killed off? What is wrong with these people. Attacked by a fox...ummm, that is soooo scary. And as we all know, fox are just crazy aggressive animals who frequently attack animals 10 times their own size.Which reminds me, there is a chipmonk in my back yard that is making me real nervous! I am afraid to go outside. (yes I am being sarcastic)
Well, I have seen fox hang around with each other, but a pack might be an exageration. I have mostly noticed that they do this in areas where food is depleted (Island Beach S.P.). This theory on red wolf hybrids is interesting. I would write it off as over active imagination by the witnesses but my wife came home one day and said that she saw the strangest thing on the PRWY:
a State trooper was pulled over to the side of the road and was looking at this canine type thing standing near the woods line. She described it as red like a fox but much larger and mangie. She has seen fox before and was quite certain it was something else, but it didn't look like any domestic dog.
So, maybe there is something down around Deptford. But that is a long way from the parkway.
It is a fact that coyote, dog, and wolf interbreed, but I've never heard of a fox mixing with the above, has anybody else?
Jeff
Well, I have seen fox hang around with each other, but a pack might be an exageration. I have mostly noticed that they do this in areas where food is depleted (Island Beach S.P.). This theory on red wolf hybrids is interesting. I would write it off as over active imagination by the witnesses but my wife came home one day and said that she saw the strangest thing on the PRWY:
a State trooper was pulled over to the side of the road and was looking at this canine type thing standing near the woods line. She described it as red like a fox but much larger and mangie. She has seen fox before and was quite certain it was something else, but it didn't look like any domestic dog.
So, maybe there is something down around Deptford. But that is a long way from the parkway.
It is a fact that coyote, dog, and wolf interbreed, but I've never heard of a fox mixing with the above, has anybody else?
Jeff
My dad is a UPS driver and his route is in Cranbury-there are people on his route that are terrified of the wild turkeys that sometimes congregate on their lawns and backyards...lol What exactly about a turkey could strike fear into a person?
Other than being the ugliest bird in the woods; most of their calls resemble chalk being dragged on a slateboard...chills up & down your spine...Badfish740 said:
That was Cranford where they had some agressive/territorial tom turkeys during the start of the breeding in mid April...NY News showed annimal control gobbling w/ a mouth [diaphram] call & they trapped & moved several birds.
I've had a hen burst out of the brush about 10 yards away...they're big birds, she had young nearby and after startling me she did the broken wing thing that mother birds do to draw you away from their young. I was moving backwards & was quite startled by the sudden apearance of this big cackling bird...I'm sure some transplanted New Yorker being intimidated easily. Might have thought the tom wanted to eat them & their kids when it was just trying to show dominence in his place to some strange competition...
I find that this board tolerates the few hunters rather well.
foxes on the increase?
There's nothing about a fox that should strike fear in anyone - except that as their population grows and their opportunities for inter-individual (fox-to-fox) contact increases two diseases are readily spread among them. One, sarcoptic mange, is not a great public health threat; the mange mites will infect a person handling the infected carcass or pelt, but the infestation is self-limiting.
The other disease is rabies. Back in the 60s the red fox was the major wildlife reservoir of rabies in the northeast. Now it's the raccoon. But that is no assurrance that if the fox population gets out-of-hand that they couldn't once again be a public health threat. This is in no way meant to suggest that fox extermination should be undertaken, just that we should be aware that as their population density increases , there is an increasing liklihood that a strangely behaving fox may, in fact, have rabies. 'Nuff said?
And no, I'm not aware of any proven instances of fox hybridization with coyotes, wolves, or dogs.
Dave Graham
Estelline, SD
There's nothing about a fox that should strike fear in anyone - except that as their population grows and their opportunities for inter-individual (fox-to-fox) contact increases two diseases are readily spread among them. One, sarcoptic mange, is not a great public health threat; the mange mites will infect a person handling the infected carcass or pelt, but the infestation is self-limiting.
The other disease is rabies. Back in the 60s the red fox was the major wildlife reservoir of rabies in the northeast. Now it's the raccoon. But that is no assurrance that if the fox population gets out-of-hand that they couldn't once again be a public health threat. This is in no way meant to suggest that fox extermination should be undertaken, just that we should be aware that as their population density increases , there is an increasing liklihood that a strangely behaving fox may, in fact, have rabies. 'Nuff said?
And no, I'm not aware of any proven instances of fox hybridization with coyotes, wolves, or dogs.
Dave Graham
Estelline, SD
woodjin said:
I used to be a park ranger (gasp!! LOL) Actually it was in a county park as a summer job when I was in college. Anyway, one summer the rabbies epidemic came around and we had a few raccoons infected. It was truly frightening, one attacked a pick up truck as we pulled up to it. We didn't get out. Did you ever see the remake of dawn of the dead? It was kind of like that. An allowance I would make to my comments about the disposition and nature of foxes would be one infected with rabbies...that would send me packing.
Jeff
Jeff