The Story Of Rosé The Gray Fox

The following story about a gray fox was submitted by All Things Wild Rehabilitation in Texas.

Somehow as a young gray fox, the little female managed to get her head into some netting. It could have been netting from an old basketball hoop. As she grew older and her neck got larger, the netting became tighter and tighter digging into her skin. One day, she caught the netting on something in a neighborhood backyard and couldn’t get free. She had been there helpless for a couple of days when the neighbors noticed her and called All Things Wild. Once they managed to get her loose and into a carrier, they brought her to us.

The wound around the neck, caused by the tight netting, was serious but not life-threatening. The medical team cleaned up Rosé’s neck, and she spent her first night in captivity with a bowl of warm EmerAid IC Carnivore food, the first food she had eaten in several days.

When Rosé’s neck had healed sufficiently and there was no longer a possibility of infection, she went to the country to meet fox rehabilitator Nicole and young fox Bec. Bec had been brought to rehabilitation as a tiny orphan several months earlier and was raised by fox rehabilitator Nicole. This story continues from Nicole’s perspective.

Rosé Meets Bec

By mid-September, Bec had grown big and confident enough for release. Though I planned to release him alone, another juvenile fox — Rosé— had arrived at All Things Wild and was on the mend from her neck injury.

So, I held on to Bec a bit longer and brought Rosé home to introduce them. Bec was a bit overeager to play (which foxes do sometimes by grabbing the other fox by the back of the neck), so they remained separated but were able to interact through the wire of Rosé’s outdoor enclosure while Bec was on his nightly rounds.

On release day, I brought them in separate crates to the release site, a beautiful rural area with a river and plenty of shady tree cover. Rosé remained in her crate while Bec explored his new home.

After he’d had a good look around, I opened the door to Rosé’s crate, and she ran straight into the trees as I expected (she was a wild fox, after all, who hadn’t been raised by me). Bec didn’t follow her immediately, but when I returned the next morning to check on him, his mind was clearly elsewhere when he came out of the forest to see me. He whined and kept glancing into the bushes, where I’m quite sure his friend Rosé was hiding, just out of sight.

After a few pets from me, Bec trotted off into the bushes. Maybe they’ll become a mated pair (gray foxes are known to mate for life), or maybe they’ll just hang out for a while until they part company to start separate lives. But either way, I’m thrilled that they have each other at the start of their wild lives. I miss him greatly, of course, but am honored to have been part of his life and his story. There’s no experience quite like it.

We called the two women who had rescued Rosé and told them that she had been released in a wild site with a male fox her same age. The site was far away from people, streets, and nets.