What Happened to Vera Vixen?

 

What Happened to Vera Vixen?

by Nina Munteanu

 

It’s late December in the old-growth riparian forest of Jackson Creek, Ontario. A light snow is falling on the cedars and pines. My footfalls crunch over a frozen sponge of litter and loam as I maneuver around large boulder erratics and tall cedars trees that creak and sway in the brisk winter wind. I head down the slope to the creek which gurgles and chortles. Occasionally, the ice cracks and booms like a designer rearranging furniture. 

 

I’ve been following the icing of Jackson Creek. Huge ice “islands” have formed over boulders, creating new channels for the freezing water to coarse around. I stop near a small tributary of the river to study the formation of ice “pearls” on either side of an ice-formed channel. I venture out onto an ice shelf and set up my small tripod to take slow shots of water magic. 

 

Breathing hard from my efforts and satisfied with the shots I’d taken, I stand up and step back from shore. It’s then, as I look down to where I’ve placed my feet, that I see it: a small white “rock”—

 

No! A skull! 

 

Embedded in the frozen leaf litter and ground, not more than several centimetres from the frozen shore of the river, lies an animal skull with a long snout. It’s the size of my hand. How did I manage not to step on it and crush it with all my tramping there? I must have stepped past it several times to get to my photo op. I bend low to get a better look. What is it doing there? Who—or what—had brought it there, depositing it on the creek shore?

 

Excited, I return the following day with a ruler to measure it and a trowel and some hot water to help me pull it out of the ground for better examination. A light snow has fallen the night before but the top of the skull is still visible. I remove the snow and the skull comes out of the ground easily, revealing several back teeth still embedded in it. While the skull is mostly intact, the lower jaw is missing and a loose tooth lies on the ground below it. I remove my prize and bring it home. After cleaning it with some bleach, I examine it further and with the help of a naturalist friend, identify it as a red fox (Vulpes vulpes).

 

The skull measures 133 mm from end of snout to external occipital protuberance (inion). The average skull length of an adult male measures 129 to 167 mm and vixens 128-159 mm. Steve Harris in BBC’s Discover Wildlife tells us that dog foxes also tend to have broader and more domed skulls than vixens; my skull is rather sleek, I think. From this I guess that the skull belongs to an adult female, a vixen. A young vixen; statistics for fox deaths favour a young fox. 

Jake McGown-Lowe of BBC’s The One Show shares that “Fox bones are hard to find.” He had found his specimens at the edge of a wood. He then shares that, “In the countryside the main predator of foxes are farmers and gamekeepers, especially around lambing time, and the gamekeepers usually take the bodies away to dispose of.” Jackson Creek is an urban park, with thirty percent of its perimeter surrounded by urban and suburban streets of Peterborough. But sixty percent of the park is surrounded by agricultural land, sheep and cattle farms, and some marsh. 

 

What was Vera Vixen’s story? (Somewhere between bringing her home and cleaning her, I decided to name her). How did Vera meet her demise and where was the rest of her? Had the skull recently washed onshore or was it recently brought to the shore by a scavenging racoon, badger, coyote, or another fox? Or had the skull been there longer and the winter ice and water just washed away the litter to reveal the embedded skull? Was it a death of misadventure? Had Vixen drowned when Jackson Creek flooded? Or was she hit by a car at the edge of the park, torn up by scavengers and her skull brought here to eat?

Various hunters have indicated that in a temperate climate it takes several weeks to several years for decomposers (insects, fungi and bacteria) to clean a skull left in the elements of nature. Temperature, humidity, presence of insects and water play key roles in the process of skeletonization. The skull at my feet could have died as recently as the fall of 2020 and as long ago as spring of 2019 during lambing season. Had Vera been shot or poisoned (including indirectly through scavenging) as she hunted for her kits? Bristol University estimated that two thirds of the fox population die each year by predators (including humans), disease and vehicles with the single largest cause of fox mortality being through road collisions. An Oxford study corroborated this with observations that 60% of the fox population were run-over by vehicles. Apparently most of the fox deaths are the young. In their 2004 review of the red fox, David Macdonald and Jonathan Reynolds at Oxford noted that “roughly 75% of the fox population die in their first year.” Studies in Europe have also shown that three to seven-month old foxes are most susceptible to traffic collisions—associated with the cub’s increase in ranging behaviour around the den and their lack of experience and larger tendency for misadventure.

The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is one of Canada’s most widespread mammals. They live an average of 3-7 years and in a wide range of habitats that include forests, grasslands, meadows and farmland. Foxes have adapted well to urban settings and ecotones between city and wilderness; in fact, they prefer mixed vegetation communities such as edge habitats and mixed scrub and woodland. Foxes dig out dens to raise their cubs in scrubwood and among Pine trees and under sheds and buildings in the city.

 

Foxes are omnivores with a varied diet of small mammals such as voles, mice, squirrels and rabbits, and a variety of plants, berries, other fruit and nuts. They are highly athletic, agile and incredibly fast (they can run up to 48 kph). Foxes have good eyesight but very keen hearing and sense of smell; this along with their ability to move swiftly and quietly through most terrain makes them effective crepuscular (dawn and dusk) predators in open country and nocturnal hunters in areas of concentrated human habitation.

Foxes are known for pouncing on mice and other small rodents; they burrow in the snow using the earth’s magnetic field to help them hunt. Foxes have good visual acuity, capable of seeing small movements from far away and for navigating dense forests as they sprint after prey. Their most useful sense however is their ultrasonic hearing. In a 2014 study by the University of Duisburg-Essen and Czech University of Life Sciences, scientists discovered that “red foxes have the best … hearing sensitivity of any mammal. They can hear a mouse squeak from [30 metres] away.” This along with their ability to move swiftly and quietly through most terrain makes them effective crepuscular (dawn and dusk) predators in open country and nocturnal hunters in areas of concentrated human habitation.

The red fox communicates through a wide range of body language and vocalizations. Foxes use scent glands and urination to communicate their individuality through their skunk-like smell. They use scent to mark territory and show status. The smell increases during mating season. The fox vocal range spans across five octaves with at least 28 different sounds that include those for “contact” and those for “interaction.” Individual voices can be distinguished. One contact sound between two foxes approaching one another resembles the territorial call of a tawny owl. When foxes draw close together, they use a greeting warble similar to the clucking of chickens. Adults greet their kits with gruff huffing sounds.

Foxes are monogamous; they stay with the same mate throughout their life. Foxes live in family units in which both parents take equal part in raising their young. Older siblings also care for the young pups. The young kits remain with their parents at least until the fall of the year they were born in and sometimes longer, especially females. Pups are typically born from February-April. They are born blind, deaf and toothless, with dark brown fluffy fur. Mom fox stays close to guard the kits and nurse them for several weeks and the father or barren vixens feed the mothers. The kits leave the den a month after and are fully weaned by 8-10 weeks. The mother and her kits remain together until the autumn after the birth. After the kits are weaned and begin to play about the den’s entrance, Dad fox helps watch them while Mom fox gets in some hunting. If the mother dies, the father takes over caring for the kits. Kits reach adult form by seven months and some vixens reach sexual maturity by ten months—enabling them to bear their first litter at one year of age.

Red foxes help balance ecosystems by controlling population of prey animals such as rodents and rabbits. They also disperse seeds by eating fruit. Steve Hall of Adirondack Almanack reminds us that red foxes play an important ecological role:

“Now and then, vulnerable farm animals such as chickens, ducks and lamb will be taken. While farmers used to routinely trap foxes, many now realize that the fox brings far more benefit in its constant predation on crop-destroying rodents and insects, than the harm they cause in taking the occasional barnyard animal; secure enclosures for hens and [use of] guard dogs to keep the fox in the field but out of the barnyard, are the key to discouraging unwanted fox predation.”

James Fair of BBC Discover Wildlife noted that a single fox during its lifetime may earn the farmer the equivalent of £150-190 through rabbit predation. Most farmers in Wiltshire consider the fox a helpmate in reducing the pest of rabbits. Hall adds that, “Lyme disease starts with rodents… [and the red fox] eats huge quantities of rodents.”

 

Red foxes feature prominently in the folklore and mythology of human cultures. In Greek mythology, the Teumessian fox or Cadmean vixen, was a gigantic fox that was destined never to be caught. In Japanese mythology, the kitsune are fox-like spirits that possess magical abilities which increase with age and wisdom. This includes the ability to assume human form. In the Cotswolds, witches were thought to take the shape of foxes to steal butter from their neighbours. In later European folklore, Reynard the Fox symbolizes trickery and deceit. In the actual world, this translates to resourcefulness, a quick study, and swift and decisive action. And perhaps that is the true meaning of Vixen.

According to Chris Lüttichau, author of Animal Spirit Guides, fox embodies resourcefulness and daring in her quest to feed herself and her young. “Fox survives and flourishes because she is clever and adaptable; she is now found living in cities. Fox teaches us to be flexible rather than to resist change.”

With thoughts returning to my Vera Vixen, I think that perhaps she is not a young unlucky fox who met with misadventure after all; but a smart old vixen who birthed and nurtured several litters of four to six kits each spring in her den in the pine-cedar forest by Jackson Creek. Her natural death after four to seven years of a rich life in the old growth forest and marsh would have led her to a quiet place to lay herself to rest; there her corpse was ultimately found by a badger, racoon or other fox and parts of her scattered throughout the forest to decompose and feed the ecosystem. Ever the mother, Vera now feeds the forest that nurtured her and her family’s existence.

Thank you, Nina, for such a detailed discussion of your discovery! 

For those interested in more information, Nina has included a bibliography listed below. 

You can also learn more about Nina Munteanu and her book Water Is... on the website https://themeaningofwater.com/ There's more to see in the podcast "The Meaning of Writing and Water" at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN0j033hAXQ&feature=youtu.be

Bibliography:

BBC. 2014. "BBC Two - Winterwatch, Urban Fox Diary: Part 2". 23 January 2014.

BBC. 2014. "Fleet the Sussex fox breaks British walking record". 22 January 2014.

Lüttichau, Chris. 2013. “Animal Spirit Guides.” Cico Books, London, UK. 160pp.

MacDonald, D. and J. Reynolds. 2005. “Red fox (Vulpes vulpes)” IUCN Canid Specialist Group. Online

Malkemper, E. Pascal, Vaclav Topinka, and Hynek Burda. 2015. “A behavioral audiogram of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes). Hearing Research Vol. 320: 30-37: Online

Monaghan, Patricia. 2004. “The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore”. Infobase Publishing. pp. 199–200. ISBN 978-0-8160-4524-2.

The Nature Conservancy: Nature.org. “Wetlands Mammals: Red Fox.” PDF Online

 

A Tribute to Scavengers and Decomposers

by Jan Thornhill

I visited a school a few days ago to talk about my books and, as usual, passed around the contents of my “museum-in-a-bag,” a collection of, among other things, skulls, dinosaur bones, desiccated insects, snake skins, feathers, and a mummified bat and two hummingbirds. The children are always very careful with my treasures, but that day my white-tailed deer skull finally snapped in half. I wasn’t exactly surprised, since this particular skull has been handled by at least 5,000 kids over the past few years. Besides, I can always glue it back together again. I’d like to save it, though, because, like many of the things in my bag, the deer skull has a story.

White-tailed deer skeleton (Jan Thornhill)

I found it, along with most of the rest of the deer’s skeleton behind a fence on my road. It’s not hard to imagine how the animal died: I’m sure someone struck it by accident with their car. Though mortally injured, it must have managed to make two great bounds, one to get off the road and the other to get over the fence. The person who hit it must have been relieved to see it disappear into the brush as he or she drove away. But then, alone, the deer collapsed and died.

A year earlier, I had looked for puffballs in exactly the same spot in late autumn. There were no deer remains then, so the longest it could have been hidden there was twelve months. Amazingly, other than a few wisps of hair and a couple of snippets of dried skin, the skeleton was completely clean – clean enough that I had no qualms about bringing it home.

So who do I have to thank for cleaning those bones for me? Scavengers and decomposers, that’s who – my favorite characters in the food chain.

I was quite sure a coyote must have visited the corpse of the deer shortly after it died since the bones of two of its legs were missing. The coyote is the only animal in my neighborhood that is strong enough to drag away such large parts. Though they’re predators, and often hunt for food, coyotes are also such frequent scavengers that they’ve developed a special receptor in their brains that makes them immediately throw up anything that is dangerously rotten. So a coyote wouldn’t have had to feed on the carcass immediately, especially if the deer had died in the cold of winter.

Coyote feeding on elk carcass (Courtesy Bryan Harry, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

Turkey vulture

Other scavenging mammals, such as foxes and skunks, might also have visited the corpse, as well as birds, such as crows and vultures. Our local turkey vulture is one of the few large animals that is a dedicated scavenger, which means that its only food is carrion, or already dead or decaying flesh. They’re perfect for this job: they have an extremely well-developed sense of smell that allows them to home in on food that's miles away; their bald heads reduce the amount of rotting matter that might stick to them; strong acids in their digestive tracts destroy harmful bacteria; and their urine is also very acidic – and here’s the best part – so they pee down their legs to let the acid destroy nasty bacteria clinging to them. 

As well as being fed upon by these larger animals, in the warmer months corpses attract an amazing number of insects. A variety of flies are lured by the smell of death and lay their eggs. Their larvae, or maggots, are voracious carrion feeders. Flesh-eating beetle larvae continue the job and, later, other beetles with specialized mouth parts show up to feast on tough skin and ligaments, followed by moths that eat fur and hair. These insects all arrive at such specific stages of decomposition that forensic entomologists, scientists who study the insects that are found on or near dead things, can use their knowledge of this progression to determine the time of death when the remains of a human are found.

Close-up of a blowfly maggot (Eye of Science)

Throughout this whole process bacteria are active, gobbling up the corpse from within. These bacteria produce gases as a waste product, and it’s these gases that are responsible for the putrid odors that waft off rotting animals. Humans are naturally revolted by these smells, which is a good thing. If we weren’t disgusted by the smell of decomposition, we might be tempted to eat food that has gone bad and get sick from the bacteria growing on it. Interestingly, almost everyone in the world says the same thing when confronted by these smells, some version of “Yuck!” or “Ick!” This verbal gagging is so natural and so universal that some people think it might be the way that human language began.

My tip to anyone who finds an animal skull (or other bones) and wants to bring it home, is to use your eyes and nose. If it looks gross and smells disgusting, leave it where it is. Mark the location and return in a few months. More often than not, scavengers and decomposers will have completely cleaned it up for you.

You can find out lots more about death and decomposition in my book: I Found a Dead Bird: The Kids’ Guide to the Cycle of Life & Death (Maple Tree Press)

Here’s a fun, time-lapse video showing a watermelon decomposing over 35 days: http://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/12926682492