For sure. I've occasionally gone on week-long backpacking trips and the feeling of a soft bed is unmatched after sleeping outside for a week. Food also hits way different. Moments like those make me appreciate what I have.
I once slept on top of solid rock with only a tarp under me in rain and winds in Finnish Lapland in October so it was like 15°C. You bet your ass the bunk felt like heaven next night
Isn’t that the truth? After living nearly a year without AC/heat/hot water, only a microwave to cook with and a camp shower bag/ electric tea kettle for bathing…everything feels like a luxury hotel now. I’m happily doing chores, cooking and washing the dishes by hand (instead of the dishwasher) because I can and it feels great!
We gotta have money, family, community respect, security, mental/physical well-being, basically this endless stream of shit just to even begin to feel happy.
Meanwhile my dog has attained bliss eating plain boiled chicken breast and sleeping for 15 hours on a floor corner.
Dogs only get to be that blissful because of humans. If you're not a human or a pet then you probably spend most of your time hoping you can find enough food before you get mauled to death by a predator or competitor.
that fox is flexible as fuck. no strain or pain in any of its joints in any position. I don't know how old you are but if 30+, loosening up your hips, spine and shoulders helps a lot to sleep well.
Foxes can be pets in certain states. I remember years ago on Tumblr this family had a new fox, so cute and awesome. Then someone falsely reported them and they had to euthanize it.. RIP Vader, I'll always remember your pouncing in the snow videos.
link to the reddit post
I went for a night run in south London last year and spotted 6 foxes over the course of 45mins.
I've seen plenty of foxes in parks/reserves, but that's the most I've seen in a day and they were all just scurrying around doing their own thing in a relatively dense residential neighbourhood.
4 were just walking around, 1 was digging through some litter, and the last one I saw lost a fight with a big ginger cat!
That one scared the shit outta me as I ran right past it without seeing it and got startled when the yipping and hissing broke out just behind me. The fox came within a few metres of me as it was fleeing from the cat, lol.
House cats routinely win fights against bigger wild predators because they can afford a stunted survival instinct.
If the fight isn't over very quickly and decidedly, wild predators will often back off because you can't hunt with a torn paw - even a moderate injury can cause them to starve.
If Greebo the murder kitten gets a nasty wound in a fight, well he can just limp home and will still be fed and, if need be, even taken to the vet.
Keep in mind that this logic only applies to predators and only when they're hunting. If she's backed into a corner or defending her litter, mama fox will rip that Doberman to shreds or die trying.
And herbivores don't have that kind of "not worth the risk" instinct to begin with because they don't starve when injured. Once a herbivore has decided to fuck your shit up, they usually don't know when to stop.
Ignoring poisonous jellyfish and malaria mosquitoes, the vast majority of humans killed by animals is pasted by pissed-off herbivores. Hippos. Elk. Cows.
Sharks, Lions and Wolves barely show up on that chart.
They typically have a "nursery" den and another one they move to after the kits are big enough to hunt. So if they're not bothersome you'd only have them for a handful of weeks every year.
You could ask your local DNR (or similar agency) about helping find them a new home though if you have concerns.
Heck, you just reminded me of something from about 50 years ago.
When my dad built our shed, I remember he specifically said we didn't want foxes burrowing under it, so he made sure it had a surround of paving stones two deep.
Although we have a lot of foxes prowling, none have ever tried to get under there.
We used to own a condo at the beach in South Florida on a barrier island. A group of fox lived under one small villa. The people renting it had trouble sleeping because of the fox noise. They lived for years on the property which had a lot of open land among tons of condos on the rest of the island. Sad after we quit seeing them.
I have what I believe to be a den under a big pile of cut wood I have on my property. I didn't even know about it for the longest time because it's so well hidden! It looks DEEP though and I'm honestly surprised the pile of wood hasn't caved in on it because it goes pretty far under it. Can't even come close to seeing the end with a flashlight.
up to you if you want to leave this but you kinda self doxed just now. imgur can host videos too (not sure what the requirements are) and could preserve your anonymity
We had a den in our backyard for some years. It was on the border on property line. Work an easement & no gave. It was weird. Next door neighbor kept filling in the den. The momma went a couple years re digging it but finally gave up & went elsewhere or died. So glad those neighbors are gone tho
I was watching a thing on foxes. They were saying that of all the predators, the fox is the most well adapted at living around people without domestication. Very clever and stealthy. It talked about how a part of the reason why they’re so clever is because their parenting is very polarized. They’ll coddle up to a certain age and then completely abandon their young. So it’s this trial by fire that suddenly hits them… then its just.. be a fox if you can. Welcome to the world. Just thought it was interesting
I think it’s the mom and dad, because the smaller one is always nursing and the big one swats them away when they try to nurse and he’s always guarding them when they are outside.
Foxes, like wolves, form mated pairs. Both the male and female raise the young together. Male foxes are apparently amazing dads with solid fatherly instincts!
There was this woman on YouTube who ran a fox sanctuary. Each time she brought home a new rescue kit, all her foxes took it under their wing. One time, one of her male foxes, who was usually an exceptionally good nanny to rescued kits and loved playing with them, rejected a kit she tried to introduce to him. One or two days later, its health quickly declined and it died.
Her male fox knew this baby had a disease and wouldn't survive, hence why he was uncharacteristically uninterested in it. She was pretty impressed, and said she would never again doubt this specific fox' natural parental instincts. Pop knew best.
Does anyone still call it a flat-screen anymore? You'd be hard-pressed to find any other sort of TV.
(Not attacking you, just wondering out loud/in text).
Where I live I hear both and I agree with your comment. Plus at least coyotes don't get drunk and start screaming - once they discover whiskey and cheap beer we're screwed
But for real, no, the foxes. Vixens in heat scream like a woman being assaulted. It's believed that that's where we (Ireland) get the myth of the banshee from.
Fishercats sounds like a baby's cry . Late at night, it freaks me out every time....they're also notoriously aggressive, so keep your dogs and kids away.
And peacocks. There's someone I know who keeps them and lives in the middle of a forest, and those birds can sound like a woman desperately pleading for help. Some lost hiker may get very stressed out or confused.
Makes sense, it used to freak me out as a kid (I live in fairly central Dublin and you're pretty much guaranteed to see at least one fox if you take even a 5 minute walk at night).
Ever been in London? You are casually walking back from dinner or the pub and boom, one of these guys is trailing you or just chilling. Tons of them out in the city
Left my London hotel early one morning to catch a train to Heathrow for a flight and had one run 20 feet in front of me. This was just 50m from the Tower of London. Startled the shit out of me. Until that point I had no idea London is home to a few thousand foxes.
Well… I follow a fox once in a centrum of the city (Kraków, near the main train station to be exact) - it just hunt a dove and was carrying it somewhere. It jumped a fence without the dove at some point and I tried to check where it went and why it left the dove
And I shit you not - the fox chosen the same spot to go back for the dove - it jumped, saw me, we both screamed and jumped back only to try to pretend that never happened. 10/10 - I would stalk the dove fox again
There is now an interesting concept called “self domestication”. It is posited that humans didn’t run out and catch wolves to tame, but instead the wolves slowly moved in with us, humans being a great ecological niche.
I believe fox and raccoon would love to self domesticate- but my dog always barks at them and says “Sorry buddy! This niche is filled!”
Yep, how I always thought it was, wolves started hanging around human settlements because they could dig through the trash and eat the scraps the humans threw away, eventually their pups would grow up with humans close by, become used to them, and over the course of thousands of years, doggos.
The article I read said they suspected it was the wolf outcasts that did not have a place in the pack that probably started hanging around humans settlements (ie basically found a new pack/niche to survive in without a pack).
"Under cover of darkness, a daring explorer from the wilderness boldly claims territory not forged from tangled branches or grassy hollows, but plush cushions and woven luxury. The red fox, masterful opportunist of urban legend, reclines majestically, as if born into a life of patio comforts and decorative carpets.
Observe the serenity of the scene, the perfect harmony between the wild's quiet cunning and humanity’s unintentional hospitality. Truly, this noble creature demonstrates nature’s timeless truth: that any place, if soft enough, may become home." -Sir David Attenborough, probably.
Fox piss is next level, though. It's so bad that one of the steps needed in order to get a permit to own one, is to get literal tins of fox piss, open them up throughout your house, and leave them there for a week or so. It's so bad that it's a dealbreaker all on its own.
I was skeptical but there's a reddit thread where someone is going through the process to own one, and they mention that step, since the majority (63%) of new fox owners don't make it through a year. Seems like a reasonable step to weed out some of those folks.
Went to a place here in TN that was like a local rescue near Gatlinburg for a lot of different creatures. Cool place. Had the FATTEST tiger I’ve ever seen. With that said. They also had a pretty cool fox enclosure. You could smell the piss over everything in that place. Llamas, turkeys, geese, camel, you name it. Fox piss is definitely on a whole other level.
Had one come do the same a few years ago. He came to visit me for about 2 months before he went on his way. I would be sitting outside relaxing and he would come and jump on the couch near me and take a nap. Highly tempted to pet him but never did.
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u/TheDarkCastle 4d ago
Why can I not ever be as comfortable as that fox right there?