Oct 23 2009
Mystery Solved
For more than a week my husband and I have heard a mysterious hoarse barking in our neighborhood at night, sometimes behind our house, sometimes at the ballpark across the street. It’s usually three to ten short hoarse barks, then it stops for a while and starts up again in another location. The first time I heard it, it woke me at 4:00am. I lay frozen in bed, listening. There’s a wild thing outside!
We live in a city neighborhood where the houses are five feet apart and the backyards are 600-700 square feet so wild things are unusual, even startling, where we live. I’ve seen birds and raccoons and groundhogs. But larger animals? No. We don’t even have deer on my street.
Every night we hear the barking. It starts as early as 8:30pm and it’s quite loud. The neighbors turn on their outdoor lights and peer out into the darkness. We talk about it at the bus stop, “Did you hear it last night? What is it?”
In the beginning I ruled out red fox because I’d heard one bark in Maine and this sound is not nearly so creepy, but Wednesday night the barking was very close and downright annoying. I had to know so I searched online again and found this excellent video of a ”Vixen Barking.” Aha!
Thursday morning she called from the wooded gully across the street an hour before dawn. I watched from my front porch as one housecat, then another, scurried from the woods to the houses next door. She barked again, half a block away, then crossed the street and I saw her silhouetted by the streetlight. A fox! Very cool.
Why is she in my neighborhood and how long will this barking go on? I found those answers online, too.
- Foxes like places that have high prey populations, especially rabbits. We have lots of squirrels and this summer a bumper crop of rabbits.
- Foxes bark to claim territory. Unlike distress or fighting sounds of other animals, foxes repeat the call to get the message across.
- Foxes pair for life but the family stays together only during the breeding season. At this time of year the families split up and the young foxes are finding new places to live. Our fox may be new to the area.
- The barking will certainly end by the next breeding season – probably much sooner. Just to prove the point she was silent last night.
Mystery solved.
(photo from the National Park Service via Wikimedia, in the public domain)
Excellent. I envy you. I live in the Reqent Square area an vividly recall looking out the window one evening to see a black bear casually ambling down the street towards the business district!
We humans are putting more pressure on wildlife by our uncontrolled urge to expand/build/dominate. I hope she stays safe.
I sent this blog to my son Richard, who lives in Scituate MA, and has almost tame foxes in his neighborhood. I asked him if he’d heard the same odd barking you describe. He said he did — and now he knows why !!
November 1: Full moon & clear sky tonight. After several days of silence the fox is barking a lot this evening. I went outside in the dark to see her but there was not enough light. I heard her trot by on the leaves in the valley of Magee Field & saw her shape. Bigger than a cat, smaller than a shepherd dog. Moves like a fox. Wish I’d had a better look.
November 3 at 11:49pm: Clear sky, moon on the wane. I saw moonlight coming through an upstairs window and looked out to see the moon. Then I saw a critter walking up the back alley in an area I could easily see. The fox! She paused in clear sight and barked. Yay!