Since we bought our Littleton, Colorado, farm in 1990, a large pile of mulch has been accumulating and compacting in a back corner of the property. This week, while adding limbs to an adjacent brush pile, I noticed an opening at the base of mulch and immediately suspected that another fox was living on our farm. In recent years, a pair of red fox had denned beneath our barn and, every spring, their toddlers would appear, chewing on the garden hose, wrestling on the jacuzzi deck or chasing each other through the pastures.
My suspicions regarding the new resident were confirmed later in the week when a fox suddenly scrambled over the back fence as I approached the area. He (or she) has certainly picked a convenient site, hidden within an overgrown and largely ignored parcel of land, where there are surely plenty of field mice to fuel his activity. We can now look forward to the remnants of his kills (goose feathers, fish heads, squirrel legs) appearing on our property throughout the coming winter.
As other regional farms have morphed into suburbs, wild residents have fewer sites on which to den, nest and hunt. The fox is certainly welcome on our farm and, if we are lucky, a new set of pups might emerge to entertain us next spring. Sharing the land with our wild neighbors is, after all, the most appealing aspect of owning a farm.
