Gray Fox Report: January 2023

We here in Silicon Valley have just lived through one of the major rainstorm events to occur since 2017. When one inch of rain falls in the hills west of the valley and across the valley floor, then Matadero Creek and all other creeks nearby like Adobe Creek to the east and San Francisquito Creek to the north west hit high water and two of those creeks, Matadero and Adobe, will go over its banks and flow up against the two levees, on the south side of the creek and on the north side leaving very little room for the wildlife to escape the raging water. With conditions like that, I often wonder how the wildlife cope with such a sudden influx of high water. Where do the gray foxes Laimos and Big Eyes go to catch their food and to stay warm and dry in a shelter somewhere? Where do the beavers go when their lodge is flooded?

With these recent rains and high water, I saw how raccoons and other critters dealt with the water. In many cases the raccoons continued to forage at the water’s edge but now the high water, is up maybe some six feet above normal. I picked up images of these raccoons on my trail camera. One of those cameras looks directly down into the flood water and there below the trail camera swam a raccoon. They are very adept swimmers. Had someone told me that woodrats were also adept swimmers before I saw it happen, I would have likely argued that they don’t swim and that they needed to take refuge in a tree nearby, but Nature showed me that that’s not the case. 

Knowing where the gray foxes Laimos and Big Eyes were denned up, I worried that they would be trapped there on Cute’s Hill which is the only high spot along that section of Matadero Creek. All the remaining land was under water. However, and to my great surprise, on one of the trail cameras over by the water treatment plant at the point of the highest water this season so far, the pair of gray foxes hunted. Somehow, they had found a way to get to their secondary hunting grounds and there they were able to sustain themselves. Once I’d seen that, I assumed that they had moved their den from Matadero Creek and were keeping their distance from the high water. That was not to be the case, for on another night and in heavy rain, those two foxes showed up along Pond Road. (This is a levee road connecting East Bayshore Road with the overflow channel along Matadero Creek.) This happened not once, but several times.

I was baffled. How could they travel from a flooded region over about a quarter mile away and return along Pond Road? The following is sheer speculation: As the creek water came higher inundating the land along the creek’s banks, they crossed a fallen tree that spanned the creek and then they trotted along the Adobe Loop Trail. They followed the road to the water treatment plant region. In order to get back to Pond Road, they’d have to cross the Matadero Creek Bridge, trot along the Adobe Loop Trail paralleling East Bayshore Road to Pond Road where they had a secondary den that was not flooded.For those who make it through, it sometimes takes a week for everything to return to normal and for the critters to return to their routines. Meanwhile, after such flooding, once the water recedes, a dozen or so turkey vultures came for a banquet and to clean up the inevitable casualties of the storm.