In the Beginning, Part #1 left off with this paragraph. One morning, as he came out of the brush, I walked up the road to check whether any other foxes were out in a small meadow near the truck washing pad. Nothing. I looked back down the road. That little fox was up on my log stool, sniffing my scent. I just watched. Several seconds later, he jumped down and ran back into the underbrush.

I thought it odd that, aside from that first encounter with adult gray foxes and my fear that one might attack me, I saw no adult gray foxes on the road or under the brush. Greg and I decided to set up a trail camera at the water treatment plant, near where we often saw the cubs from the road back in the brush. Bingo. There was one of the adults and three pups in a small clearing next to the chain-link fence. The pups climbed the fence, then linked up with the branches of a large bush growing beside it. They chased each other. The adult brought in a snack for them, and on one occasion one of the cubs caught it in his jaws and shook it as hard as he could while the adult watched. The cub was practicing how to kill its prey. 

As we added more cameras, the action stayed down along the road. It was already late June, and the pups were nearly into their adult color. What had been a pudgy nose was now a budding snout. They were preparing to follow the adults at night on their trail for dinner. Early one morning that bold little pup I had been closely documenting walked out onto the road and approached me. Even after all that time, if I moved wrong or scuffed my boot, he dashed for the brush, then turned around and came right back out. I began talking to him. When I came along in the early mornings, and he emerged from the brush onto the road, I welcomed him, and then I’d chatter some nonsense like “How was your night? Did you catch a mouse? Where are the other foxes?” At the time, all I wanted was for him to get used to my voice and relax in my presence, and he did. 

Soon he grew confident enough to stay on the road. On several occasions, he even walked toward the truck-washing pad. I noticed he squatted and peed every 10 to 20 feet. (That’s called urine marking.) Later, I learned he was marking territory. He was the first gray fox to allow me into his realm, and the first fox I named. I called him Squat. 

Gray foxes mature around nine months old. Around that time, the young typically disperse, find new territory, find a mate, and establish their own home range. They are like late teenagers, ready to leave home. However, Squat didn’t disperse, and this has always been a question for me: Why didn’t he leave the area? What happened to his parents? They seemed to have vanished, which is unusual in the gray fox world. With that in mind, Squat took over the territory his parents had once claimed. He teamed up with a young female. I never got to know her, and I never met her the way I met Squat. Thus, I never named her.

One morning in late April, Squat lay belly-down on the ground at the edge of the brush in the area I came to call Fox Hollow. As I approached, he stood. He watched me intently, turned, and walked up the road. I followed and called to him, but he did not respond. When we reached the clearing just before the truck washing pad, Squat bounded off into the weeds and brush, leaving me standing there, wondering what that was all about. Only later did I conclude that Squat had led me away from his new family, much as a Kildeer will lead one away from its nest. Apparently, he did not want me to disturb them.

In their second year together, 2012, they had a litter of four pups. When I arrived in the mornings, Squat was always waiting. On one of those mornings, he sat right next to the brushline, looking back into the brush. I waited and watched. After several minutes, a small pup emerged from the brush and nuzzled up to Squat, her father. At that moment, I had no idea what this little fox would be named, but as she grew, I named her Bold because she, like her father, was fearless when she approached me. 

Later, as a full adult, she tried to disperse, but never succeeded because the baylands do not have enough territory for all the wildlife to call their own. Squat became upset. He tried to chase her away, but she stayed. Finally, one morning they fought. It was brief but ferocious. I stood about 15 feet away. Suddenly, as if someone had flipped a light switch, both stopped fighting and looked behind me. I turned to see a slim, grayish fox in the trees, whom I later called Gray. Bold ran to him. I turned back to see Squat, but he was gone. I never saw my first professor, the gray fox Squat, who taught me the basics of gray fox behavior. He was my first professor, and I was his first grad student. See this short documentary produced by Syler Peralta-Ramos at Stanford University, The Foxes, My Professors: Bill Leikam and the Grey Foxes of Silicon Valley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9uSMppb5jY ) for the rest of the story.