There’s a small fox I’ve seen in the yard a couple of times now. It’s very thin and has a very short coat, barely there. It might be thinner than thisCape Cod Red Fox, but it’s tail isn’t bushy at at all and you could barely tell it had a coat instead of an even reddish brown color. There are Red Fox in the neigborhood, but I’ve never seen one that looked quite like that. It seems to be a little on the small side, so possibly a juvenile, but I think it might look more like an adult if had the typical bushy coat.
Poor guy probably has mange. The best thing to do is call animal control and hopefully they can capture it. The big issue with mange is that local dogs can get it. The dogs don’t even have to come in contact with the fox, just where the fox has been, then the bugs jump and now they have it.
But, eventually, without treatment, the fox will probably die. The treatment is usually a “dip” where the animal is dipped in the medicine to kill the bugs. There might be one that can be digested and maybe put it in treats for the fox and the fox will eat it.
It didn’t seem all patchy like dogs I’ve seen with mange, but I searched and found a page about mangy fox sitings, and this picturelooks very close to what I saw. I guess I’ll be calling animal control tomorrow. I don’t know if they’ll do anything, there are rabid foxes in the area and they aren’t doing anything in particular about that. Maybe a coyote will get him.
I thought “a fox with mange” was a running joke, since that was (apparently) the explanation for a chupacrabra sighting.
Foxes, like most canids, shed in the spring and summer, so their coats are thinner, but they shouldn’t get patchy or ragged. (They might look a bit unkempt in the worst of the shedding. Like most dogs!)
Would their tails ever look hairless just from shedding?
Totally hairless? That really does sound like mange, or some other skin infection/parasitic infestation.
I called Animal Control today, could only leave a voice message. I doubt I’ll hear back, they don’t do much around here. I don’t know what they could do anyway except put out a trap. I’ll let the neigbors know, they may have seen him already. There’s a bunch of dogs in the neigborhood, so no one is going to be happy about mange.
Mange or not, I find it hard to believe that the local agencies would be that blase about a rabies outbreak.
There’s a lot of rabid wildlife around here. Rabid racoons, fox, bats, and coyotes, on top of all the deer, fisher cats, and feral cats. Development has been cutting into their habitat, and they don’t have enough to eat once they’re done eating each other. If a rabid animal is seen the cops will come out to shoot it. Other than that they aren’t going to put a lot of effort into doing anything. They don’t have the equipment or the personnel.