For several years now (at least two) I have been seeing a fox around my farm that shows very little fear of humans. I believe my first encounter with it was when I noticed that working gloves, shoes and other textile clothing articles (shirts, socks…) that I left outside the house would get displaced or disappear altogether. At first it was a mystery to me – I thought some young dog must have stolen them to play with as puppies love to do. Later I found some of my stuff strewn in the bushes about 150 yards from the house, which confirmed my suspicion that some animal has been stealing my stuff.
Last year on several occasions I disturbed a fox in the upper house building. It was apparently sleeping in the attic between the roof beams – the house is built into a side of the ridge which makes it possible to enter the roof area pretty easily from the upper slope side. The building is just a roof-covered shell of walls without doors and windows that I have been using as a storage place for wood planks and beams, building material and separated waste.
The most recent encounter was the most surprising to me by revealing behavior that I haven’t expected from a fox. Last week I went for a walk to Zajezova where I was “stopped” by an old lady living on one of the farm houses Zajezova is famous for, who wanted to chat. Besides (many) other things she told me wild pigs were eating walnuts fallen from the tree in her yard. I knew they love to eat acorns, but haven’t heard before that they like walnuts. This story was on my mind when early morning a couple of days ago I heard unusual nut-cracking sound coming from my yard. I thought that maybe I have pigs visiting me, so I got a flashlight to try to get to the root of the mystery. To my surprise the beam of light revealed that a fox has been doing all that noise. A few days later I was in the kitchen – just returned from a biking trip – and heard the sounds again. I looked from the window and saw the fox in the same spot below the walnut tree with a walnut in its mouth. I had my phone nearby and managed to take the pictures shown below documenting not only the fox looking for walnuts, but also burying them directly in my yard. The pictures are not that good, but hopefully tell the story.
The fox searching for walnuts.
Carying a walnut in its mouth toward the water tank cover
The fox found a rain-made grove in the ground and buried the nut.
After a job well done it drunk some water from the voids left for handles in the concrete tank cover.