Foxes taken from parents ‘a really sad story’

A litter of red fox pups that gained internet notoriety with their playful antics on St. Mary’s hill in Port Washington have been trapped and separated from  their parents at the behest of a group of area residents who, wildlife experts said, were apparently unwilling to coexist with the generally harmless animals for the short time they would have been in the area.

Seven of the remarkably large nine-pup, or kit, litter are safe at Pine View Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in the Town of Fredonia, where they were brought beginning last week by the wildlife control company hired by residents to remove them from their downtown Port Washington neighborhood, Kristen Bustamante, the center’s hospital manager, said Tuesday.

The 3-month-old kits are in excellent health but probably will never be reunited with their parents, she said.

“Mom and dad were doing a very good job of raising them,” Jeannie Lord, executive director of Pine View, said.

An eighth kit was found dead of unknown causes and the ninth remained free as of Tuesday afternoon, although traps were still set, Bustamante said.

The parents remain free, and there have been reports of the mother wailing or screeching at the sight of her kits caught in traps, she said.

“It’s just a really sad story,” Bustamante  said.

Sad because the disruption of the fox family was unnecessary, a consequence of misplaced fears about wildlife, Bustamante and Lord said.

Foxes, which are not uncommon in urban areas where there is ample food and fewer predators, have no interest in humans, don’t cause house damage and are unlikely to confront house pets unless their young are threatened, Bustamante said.

In fact, they are considered beneficial urban dwellers because they are proficient at controlling mice and rat populations.

“This is all about a lack of understanding of foxes and the benefits of them,” Bustamante said. “They don’t eat children, they don’t damage houses and I don’t even know of an instance of them going after pets as prey.”

In addition, the foxes in downtown Port weren’t there to stay and would have moved on after getting their kits on their feet.

“I think people see these foxes and think, ‘Oh no, our neighborhood is going to be overrun,’” Bustamante said. “They were only going to be there temporarily before moving on. You just wish people could somehow find a way to cohabitate with them for a few months.”

Lord said, “All people have to do is let them be for a little while and they’ll be gone. That’s it.”

Advanced Wildlife Control of Mequon began bringing the kits to Pine View May 2 and brought the seventh to the shelter this week, Bustamante said.

She said she believes the company was hired by a number of residents who own condos across Wisconsin Street from St. Mary’s Church. The foxes’ territory, she said, apparently extended from St. Mary’s hill to the condo property.

“The company is offering a paid service that is 100% legal, as unfortunate as it is taking young away from their parents,” Bustamante said. “Fortunately, we have a good relationship with this company.”

Unlike other wildlife control companies that randomly relocate animals or worse, euthanize them, Advanced Wildlife Control brings many of them to Pine View.

Advanced Wildlife representatives could not be reached Tuesday.

The kits will be raised in large outdoor enclosures with little human interaction and a natural diet of rodents and fruit, Lord said.

The odds of reuniting them with their parents are slim because returning to their downtown Port territory would require the permission of the property owners who paid to have them removed, Bustamante said.

And even if the savvy adults could be trapped, bringing them to their young and trying to reunite the family in a different area would likely be unsuccessful. The mother, faced with having to care for seven or eight kits in a strange territory, may abandon them, she said.

Most likely, the kits will be released into the wild this summer and be fine, although without the survival lessons they would have learned from their parents.

“This is a situation that was caused by fear of wildlife because of a lack of knowledge,” Lord said. “We’re the ones who have difficulty adapting to wildlife, not the other way around.”