Foxes and the Moral Quandaries of Farming

We’re currently being out-foxed by a Urocyon cinereoargenteus–a gray fox.  In the last few weeks, the fox in question has carried off two chickens, presumably not to befriend them. Over the years, we’ve never had any luck trapping foxes. We can trap just about everything else–possums, raccoons, neighbor’s cats–but the fox has always been able to sniff out and elude our entrapments. We even caught this hawk a few days ago (and safely released it).

When dealing with a fox, you’d best call in a professional trapper. We know this because we once brought in a non-professional trapper. He was one of my wife’s coworkers, a fellow librarian–and a self-described “outdoorsman.” Be advised: a self-described outdoorsman should not be allowed to handle any spring-loaded contraptions that look medieval–the risk of self harm is just too much. Nor should you ever sniff anything a self-described outdoorsman hands you in a little brown jar–unless, that is, you’d like to become an aficionado in the various wafts and whiffs of urine. 

“Wow, that’s fox pee?” I said, trying not to gag. 

“No, it’s synthetic, but most people can’t tell the difference,” he said. 

Apparently, only pee snobs can tell the difference–these elite outdoorsmen spend much time at highfalutin urine sniffing events, where they slosh pee around, then sniff it and make erudite comments like, “This pee has undertones of roadkill–I believe this fox that produced this urine had just eaten an armadillo in Burgundy.”

Also, foxes can tell the difference. They prefer all-natural organic fox pee. If you haven’t done much comparison shopping in the urine aisle recently, organic fox pee has really suffered from inflation–in fact, most stores now keep it locked in those plastic anti-theft boxes, to prevent shoplifters from swiping it and selling it on the black market. With egg prices back down, sometimes I think I’d be better off just sacrificing the chickens to curry favor with the fox, then asking it to pee in a cup. 

Anyway, after the synthetic fox pee failed, the outdoorsman counseled me on various shades and patterns of camouflage, so we could stake out the fox and shoot it. I chose a Realtree Xtra Oak Camo Print, but the goats quickly blew over cover. They walked right up to us and tried to eat the oak leaves on my shirt. Then the self-described outdoorsman misidentified the goats as sheep (free farming lesson: sheep tails point down, goat tails point up), and I began to question his credentials as an outdoorsman.

Alas, our current fox is probably a descendant of the previous fox I failed to shoot. For now, our chickens remain cooped up. Ah, the moral quandaries of farming: let the chickens live free and die or live cooped up (and live).