For those of you who already understand the behaviors of wild critters, this will come as no surprise, but if you had been in my shoes in 2009, when I saw that first gray fox sitting beside the road in the area that I would eventually dub Fox Hollow, your life and mine would have been changed forever. I entered my study of the gray fox’s behavior by sheer accident. At that time, I did not know I was ready to head out on a journey that would forever change me as a human being. Prior to that meeting, I had thought very little about wild animals, and had you asked me to describe them, I would have tossed in words like instinct, mechanistic, and more dehumanizing terms like it.

One morning in mid-October 2009, at the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve, I was out in the field birding for Bullock’s Orioles when ahead of me I saw a fox sitting beside the road. I had no idea what kind of fox it was, but my curiosity kicked in, and I slowly walked toward the galvanized pipe gate, taking photos of the fox beside that dirt road. I came up to the gate and took another photo. I was rather close to it, and I wondered if it had rabies or some other disease, for I had expected it to run, disappear back into the woods along the road. All the while, the fox watched me approach. When I walked around the edge of the gate, the fox stood up, turned, and disappeared into the brush. 

The next day I returned, hoping to see a fox. Nothing. Two days later, just under the lip of the brush, three young foxes wrestled and played. I thought, “Oh my god, there’s not just one fox. There’s a whole family living here.” I hunkered down and took photos of them. 

In the days that followed, whenever I arrived, their play stopped, and they stared at me. Two of them always retreated deeper into the brush, but one remained just under the edge, lying on its belly. I made a note of it, but I took it no further until one morning, when the fox that clung just under the edge of the brush shifted and stood. 

I shifted my position. That fox dashed deep into the brush. I didn’t move. About two minutes later, it slowly emerged from the dense brush and walked toward the road. I had the impression that this little fox was as curious about me as I was about him. His two siblings watched from farther back in the brush. I remember thinking at the time that those two back in there must think, “He’s crazy going out there so close to the road, and besides there’s a human out there.”

Up to that point, I had not met any adults, but one morning, early, I stood on the edge of the road. I looked to my right toward the gate. Two adult gray foxes trotted toward me, each carrying something in its mouth. They stopped at the gate about 15 feet away. One lay flat on its belly. The other dashed past me. The one on the road dropped the rodent and growled. At that point, I wasn’t sure what to do. Out of my ignorance, I imagined this fox suddenly attacking me. After all, it was a wild animal. I looked for a stick, some kind of weapon to fend off an attacking gray fox. Instead, that fox picked up its prey and dashed past me. Little did I know about gray fox behavior. 

Two days later, that courageous little fox I had been monitoring came out to the edge of the road. I watched it for maybe two minutes, and then, on a whim, I said, “Hey, little fox, hey, what cha doin’?” He had an expression of surprise on his face. That’s when I began talking to the foxes of the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve, and at the same time I was getting tired of sitting on the damp, chilly ground. I decided to find a log to use as a stool. I found one up near the truck washing pad. Every morning when I visited there, across the road from their den, I sat on that old log and jotted down notes on what the fox was doing. 

The bold little fox gradually crept farther out onto the road, and at the same time he began changing his baby color, mostly gray, to areas of rusty red, and his pudgy nose began to lengthen and transform into a snout. Around that stage in the development of these gray foxes, I wondered why they were born with a flat, pudgy nose that would, as an adult, lengthen into a snout. The answer didn’t come right away. 

As he continued to come from the brush, one morning I walked up the road just to check whether there were any other foxes out in a small meadow near the truck washing pad. Nothing. I looked back down the road. That little fox was up on my stool, sniffing my scent. 

To be continued – Comments, both positive and negative, are welcome.