Gray foxes range throughout New Mexico and most of the United States. Unlike red foxes—who are in a different genus—gray foxes diverged early in North America from the Order Carnivora. More than other canines, they can digest grains, nuts, and fruit. Along with semi-retractable claws, kept sharp for climbing trees, they have the catlike ability to rotate their forearms, which allows them to hug a tree trunk as they push upward with their hind legs. Weighing between six to fifteen pounds, with relatively short legs and a low center of gravity, gray foxes can scramble sixty feet up a cottonwood and then jump from branch to branch.
I’ve waited all my life to see this.
Gray foxes usually mate with the same partner every spring and raise their pups together before the juveniles disperse at about seven months. They can live four or five years in the wild but often die before that, being susceptible to diseases like distemper and rabies. As well as being trapped for their fur, gray foxes are also killed by coyotes and bobcats, who dislike them as competitors and threats to their young.
Partly as a way to avoid these predators, gray foxes sometimes rear their pups close to human houses. Over the years, I have watched these families from the window of the room where I write in the Gila Valley of southwestern New Mexico. These are glimpses only. Two foxes sunning on the slope that leads to the irrigation ditch, one lifting a leg to lick its belly. A fox racing by the bird feeder, rat tail dangling from the mouth like a film noir cigarette. A fox being schooled by a skunk, who stomped once with its front feet and also emitted a slight odor. The fox catapulted. Just the right verb. Now the fox was a dozen feet away, looking surprised.
These vignettes are from years of reaching for my binoculars. Some years, I never see gray foxes at all. Naturally, I have many memories from these last decades. Presidential elections, holidays with adult children, dancing parties. The gray foxes rank similarly in importance, helping create the story I tell myself about myself. I am a person who gets to see gray foxes. I live in a world of gray foxes unaware of my interest in them. Our relationship is not personal or transactional, not about me at all.
In a typical gray fox track, about 1½ to 2 inches, four toes point up with that compact quality of a wild canine. Often you see the impression of fur in the track. Fur accounts for the relatively large negative space in the center. You can draw an X or H in that negative space between toes and palm pad. Because the sharp nails of a gray fox are semi-retractable, often the claw marks do not show.
Sharman Apt Russell is a longtime nature writer. For more information, go to www.sharmanaptrussell.com.
