DIY_guy

Once again, a family of foxes have taken up residence under one of my sheds so I set up a trail cam at the entrance to monitor their comings and goings.


Then I waited until dusk and snuck up to the shed with a camera. I wired squirrel #106 to a stake to capture their interactions.




Yesterday I wired squirrel #107 and reset the trail cam.

FY1, squirrel #106 and #107 is the current tally of tree rats Ive taken since I waged war on them in Sept 2017 in an attempt to make my garden great again. I grow a container garden on my patio and the tree rats either dug up the pots/seeds causing me to re-plant 4 times or the waited until the plants came up and snipped them off. I discovered this after setting up trail cams to try and figure out what was destroying my plantings. Normally I eat the tree rats (of my extended family eats them) but I thought I would use a few to get fox footage.

mrbb

pretty cool
I have a family if grey foxes that live next door to me, they are in my yard all the time looking to catch a bird or chipmunk or squirrel, but seldom get any LOL
must be about 5 yrs now in a row they have lived there and had off spring I get to see almost daily ,
there cool little critters!

MudderChuck

I'm not a germaphobe in particular. But Fox are basically giant furry carnivorous Rats, more paralells than differences . I wouldn't have any hanging around my yard.
They've had outbreaks of Echinococcus here. They figured out the infection path was most likely Fox and/or Mouse to Cat, Cat to playtime sand box, sandbox to child.

We were tasked to cull all Fox and Feral Cats. Fox were pretty much shoot on sight for 15 years.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinococcus

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/2/16-1126_article

I enjoy watching the Kits play in the early evening near the den. But the possible consequences can be catastrophic. I handle Fox and Yotes like toxic waste just in case.

mrbb

30+ yrs here with foxes in yard on a regular basis, along with a ton of other critters, and never had any issue's
minus, last yr had a coon with distemper I had to put down.
by far and largest issue's with any health issues with wild or domestic critters here has been vehicle collisions injuries, have had a few bears/countless deer's and other critters that show up busted up I imagine are from vehicles,
Not saying things cannot happen, but I have never had any sign or issue's to DATE! at my rec property, and also 40+ yrs at my main property, same deal!
guess I been lucky????

MudderChuck

In my oppinion, it is all about probability. Less exposure less chance, more exposure the higher the chance. I had Tulerimia which was sure enough an eye opener for me, I was as strong and healthy as I'd ever been when I got it, I was circling the drain there for a few days, at my age now it would likely kill me. My hunting buddy got a Tape Worm, no idea how. I've gutted animals before and found some strange stuff, like live parasites (worms) crawling through the flesh, damaged and discolored organs.
I have a buddy who is a professional butcher, he does a lot of wild game. He is also one of the smartest and most knowledgable people I know. He taught me to respect the process and not get lazy about handling wild game. He advised me around Fox and Yotes it is better to wear a dust mask, some parasite eggs go airborne from dried feces stuck to the fur.

mrbb

I'm sure things can happen, NOT doubting you.
but at same time, there are SO many things out there, from Lyme from ticks, to deadly disease's from Mosquito's, after all mosquito's have killed more people than anything else out there .
yet there still almost every where!
life is a gamble I guess, and we all pick and choose what risks were OK with and what were not!
I live in a very wildlife rich area, I have wild animals in my yard off and on all day long, from big to small one's
and its been this way all my life, as it is with all my neighbors here, and to date NO one had gotten sick from critters that we KNOW of !
I do know a few folks that got Lyme disease , but all got it from other states/countries that they were in, and not locally/
about 15 yrs ago, I did have a fox(forgot about this one) that was chasing my father(in a wheel chair) around his drive way, biting at his ankles, and chasing the neighborhood kids on bikes.
called the local game warden, and he SAID he would come and check it out, after 5 calls to him and 6 hours going by, I just shot it myself!, then waited for him to come get the thing and have it tested, but he never showed up and calls to the game dept, told ,me to just throw it in the trash to get rid of it!
I double bagged it, and tossed it in trash, but IMO< I think it had Rabies, as was foamy at the mouth and acting off character for the animal!
and this is the ONLY issue I ever had in all my yrs here with so many about often.
I have worked as a butcher too over the yrs, and fully agree, precautions should be taken by all, more than most think they should too!
Ticks around anymore, worry me more than foxes, as for decades, we never had ticks here, and now there every where!
warmer winters, and just warmer all yr, seems to help them breed!
I see bears here with there ears loaded with em all the time, and feel bad for them !, as I imagine there not just on there ears, but that is only place I can see them!
.
as a fact, bears here in PA and many other places have been having out breaks of Mange, and its deadly for them,
been lucky , never had any here, but mother nature can sure be a mean gal!

MudderChuck

My mentor wasn't really sophisticated but very knowledgable about wildlife. His philosophy was basically wildlife belonged in the forest, people in the village. And if you stopped hunting them they would eventually lose their fear of humans, move in, take over and bring bad stuff with them. Sure there is going to be some crossover, but IMO you have to paint the situation with a broad brush and play the odds.

I stopped at a turnout off the interstate to take a pee. A Fox maybe just short of maturity came out of a culvert and right at me, I could hear its teeth clacking, It stopped short and circled in its own length multiple times biting at the air. I picked up a handy large stick and when it got close enough clubbed it to death. IMO it was either Rabid or had another sort of meningitis. I was taught to either dispose of them commercially (incinerate) or bury them deep and pile stones on top to make it harder for another animal to dig them up.

Part of a wildlife Stewarts duty is to cull out the sick wildlife. And to help smooth out the overpopulation and famine cyclic of wildlife.

I hunted all my life but wasn't really a true hunter until I did an apprenticeship and schooling to be a game manager. And after the training was just the beginning, as I started looking at wildlife in a new way and with new insights. In Europe they have been at the game management business a whole lot longer than the U.S. it has evolved mostly in the last 600 years to what it is today, I'm not saying it is better or worse just a little differently organized.

I worked on a study for awhile on Tick control. The idea was to set up covered feeding stations and surround the food source with horse hair floor brushes, bristle up. The brushes were covered in tick powder. The study isn't finished yet, they are still trying to decide on the dose and doing meat testing to see how much of the Tick Powder (chemicals) gets into the meat. Sure worked wonders on the Tick levels in my Deer, didn't seem to be any adverse effects I could see. My guess is they want long term study before they make any recommendations. Used to be I'd gut a deer and hang it in the cooler with the skin on and there would be dozens of Ticks on the floor of the cooler the next day.

mrbb

again, I can see your views, here,
but something I have to say is, here in the USA, due to we have wildlife in so many places, and the fact of human expansion into where wildlife lives, wildlife has NO choice but to be about humans on a regular basis.
some people learn to live better with wildlife than other.
Some choose to complain and try and alter the wildlife to THEM< and that seldom works well for anyone, from the critter to the humans, Which is something I never understood about people, that move from the city, into the woods, then complain about wildlife being there, eating there shrubs and or plantings in there yards, that were once woods/ and forests where the same animals lived before they , tried to make the place into a yard and a house on top of it!

I have known and helped and worked with a LOT of game dept folks,(typically called Wardens here) when I was younger I slightly went down the road of trying to become one, but, things went another way.
I have been very active and passionate about learning about wildlife and habitat management all my life, and have a pretty good understanding of it all on many level's.
Also have a lot of training in many other like area's, also due to a passion to learn more about things in it!

as d=for tick's and deer,
when I first started hunting deer here, I could hang them with skin on and NEVER ever find a tick on or near a deer, but since about the late 90's, that all changed, and ticks would be found her and there, into the 2010's, there now.
Its very common to find a few dozen or more on them and or around them if hung for any amount of time!
Sort of the same deal with dogs and cats(as in pets) we never found a single one on our pets, till about the mid 90's, now if you don't treat your pet with a topical flea/tick solution, they will get countless ticks on them !
Some folks don't like to talk about , global warming, or weather changes, but IMO< there is something going on, warmer weather, wetter weather, sure seems to have made for a lot more ticks in my area!
Not to mention, just all the crazy weather anymore, I don't think I have gone 48 hours without rain in over a yr now, and its terrible to have so much wet all the time!
I Doubt it can be good for any critter that isn't a fish or like species LOL
Parasites, bacteria, mold, are/is in more places now than ever due to all the rains here!

MudderChuck

I fully agree with you, but there is little wildlife I encourage to be where I live. It will never be perfect. It is kind of neat to watch wildlife from your kitchen window but IMO not smart. All you can really do is limit exposure and watch yourself and your pets closely.
I used to have a bunch of Hedgehogs hanging around the garden. Over the years the numbers expanded exponentially. I'd looked closely at a few Hedgehogs, under those bristles (spins) was a thriving colony of Fleas and Ticks. After our second Flea infestation, being woken up with Fleas in my bed and pulling many more Ticks than normal off the dogs I decided to relocate those Hedgehogs. It was actually pretty easy, Hedgehogs like nuts especially in Fall just before hibernation and I have a nut tree. After a hundred trips outside over a period of weeks with a high powered flashlight, I managed to relocate 19 of those suckers from an area of maybe a hundred square yards. I'd keep them in a plastic barrel and then make a trip to the woods when I had 3-5 of them, The inside of that plastic barrel had hundreds of fleas in it after the hedgehogs had been in there 2-3 days. Now I take normal precautions with my dogs and Fleas are rare. I moved the problem to the woods where it belonged. Side note, I'd researched Hedgehogs and most of the top hits on Google where from Hedgehog lovers who swore the parasites on hedgehogs weren't the same Fleas and Ticks that got on people and Dogs, they lied.

Around here you'd have to be blind or oblivious not to notice the climate change. Flowers blooming months earlier than they used to, fruit trees flowering 6 weeks early more years than not. Bird species etc, that used to be prolific are disappearing. I haven't seen a Blackbird in months, used to be at least two pair outside the kitchen window looking for worms in the garden. Now we have a variety of wild Bees in the garden, I haven't seen a HoneyBee in months. The changes aren't subtle here. The question is will anything we actually do make any noticeable difference. I've done some of the rough math, my conclusion is if we make a twenty percent change today, we may (or may not) change the temperature a few percentage points in twenty years. IMO we'd likely be better off in the long term learning to adapt than trying to influence the weather. One thing we can do is to stop cutting down the forest and replacing them with asphalt and concrete.