Foxes can’t often be seen loitering around the street or even randomly visiting someone’s home, but since humans are rapidly taking over their natural habitat, they eventually learned how to live alongside us, thus the reason why they can be seen in some urban areas.
Urban foxes in England.
The surge of the population of urban foxes was observed in several areas in England, most particularly in northern towns. According to New Scientist’s article in 2017, the number of red foxes in urban areas of England appears to have soared almost fivefold.
Compared to the population of 33,000 foxes back in 1990, the number rose to 150,000 in 2017. That said, it became common for some urban foxes to be seen invading someone’s home and even mark their territories in abandoned alleys.
This man happened to be visited by a very curious fox.
When Steve Downer happened to look at his yard in June one night, he noticed a female fox roaming around. The fox was frozen stiff when Downer came out of his yard. But instead of driving the fox away, Downer actually has something prepared for her.
He came out with a food bowl and a sachet of wet food, but since the vixen never knew his intentions, she quickly backed away from the distance.
Downer kneeled on the ground and poured the food into the bowl.
He wanted the vixen to know that she’s welcome and to get her to trust him, he had to offer some food to her. The fox caught the delicious scent of the food and started to bring herself closer to where the bowl was.
Speaking in a soft, gentle tone, Downer invited the fox for a meal. Eventually, the fox humbly received Downer’s welcome by reaching on the bowl.
Downer quietly sat on the grass while enjoying the sight of the hungry vixen munching on her food. After she emptied the bowl, the man attempted to pet her. However, she really wasn’t ready for it yet. Although, if this routine would continue, it would take not much time until this vixen finally gives her trust.
It seems like Downer had a lot of experience in dealing with a lot of animals.
Steve Downer is a name people hear often in the field of wildlife cinematography.
He’s one of the biggest wildlife cinematographers that worked with several TV documentary series including, the BBC’s Planet Earth, The Blue Planet, The Trials of Life, Wildlife on One, and The Natural World, and for National Geographic Explorer.
Furthermore, he won several awards for his works, like Emmy’s award. One of the iconic Emmy awards he received was the Emmy for Outstanding Program Achievement for the National Geographic Special film, KING COBRA. Knowing these, it is no wonder how he’s very used to kindly dealing with animals.
Feeding the wild urban fox became a series in his YouTube channel.
Since the same vixen has been coming back to visit Downer in his home, he decided to make a series out of their encounters. He even began to call the vixen Mrs. Fox. There are currently five episodes in this series, and in each episode, you can see how much their interaction grew each time.
Mrs. Fox had no more problems going near Downer, and he even learned how to eat directly from his hand.
Hopefully, the friendly Mrs. Fox would visit her human friend more often, so we’d get to see more of their fun interactions together.
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