Let’s Play Hide-n-Seek!
The Great Outdoors | July 8, 2021
By Jackie Scharfenberg, Forest Naturalist, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
I bet if you played hide-n-seek with a gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) like me, you would lose.
APPEARANCE
We sport a coat of mixed colors: grizzled gray backs; rusty chests, legs, and bellies; and white cheeks, muzzles, and throats. This splendid coat provides impressive camouflage in our dense forest habitat. Now, don’t confuse us with our cousin, the red fox. While their bushy tails end with white tips, ours come with black stripes along the top and black tips. We measure only 12-16 inches tall and 31-44 inches long (including a 11-20 inch tail) and weigh on average 8-15 pounds. This makes us one of the smallest fox species. With our petite size, we maneuver easily through dense brush and rocky outcroppings – talk about good hiding places!
BEHAVIOR
If you only looked on the ground, you would probably never find me. Believe it or not, gray foxes can climb trees. There is only one other canine in the world that can accomplish this feat. We’re extremely strong and possess sharp, curved, semi-retractable claws. We also have an ability to rotate our forelimbs. These adaptations allow us to grasp trees with our forelimbs and push up against the trunks with our hind legs. We’ve been known to climb to heights of 50-60 feet. Once up in a tree, we can jump from branch to branch to forage, escape predators, and to find resting spots. To get down, we back down the trunk using our front legs, much like a cat.
DIET
One way you may win the game involves waiting for me to get hungry. With my big appetite, I spend a lot of time hunting, mostly at night. Scientists call me an omnivore because I eat all sorts of things. My favorite prey are cottontail rabbits, mice, voles, and rats. I also eat birds, snails, crickets, grasshoppers, fruit, nuts, berries, new-born fawns, other small mammals, and even carrion (dead stuff). We prefer to stalk our prey in thicker cover but will swim after a meal if needed.
Remember not to just use your eyes but try sniffing me out. We will bury a kill and mark the location by urinating on the site. We also use urine to mark our territorial boundaries.
CALLS
Tune in your years and you may hear me screech, yelp, howl, or scream during the hours of darkness. A female often calls out to her mate when pregnant or taking care of young kits, if he doesn’t bring home food quickly enough.
HABITAT
If you are stealthy, you may stumble upon my denning site in a densely wooded, brushy area. We prefer to make our dens in hollow logs and trees, rocky outcroppings, or thick shrubs. We usually don’t excavate a den but will use an old woodchuck or other small mammal burrow. For temporary accommodations we may hole up beneath a human-made structure like a shed or in an abandoned woodpile.
Although I let you in on most of my secrets, I bet I can still beat you at hide-n-seek. Do you wanna play tonight?
