Dealing With Foxes and a Dirt Bike Ride In the Hills

Sunday July 17, 2022 Guerneville CA.

Trapping the fox

Here’s a couple of photos of the fox checking out the box trap last night.fox1

 

It wasn’t long before the door shut on the fox and it was caught, when another fox showed up which is the one on the outside of the box.trap2

 

Apparently there are two foxes so that’s why the chickens had such a  hard time the other day when they killed four of my chickens. This fox looks a bit larger than the other one, so maybe it’s a male.fox3

 

So now that I had a fox in the box trap I had to move the fox to someplace else further away from my house. To do that I transfer the fox to this lighter box for moving to another location. boxes1

 

Barry shows up

But before I could do the moving my brother Barry showed up for a dirt bike ride so I moved the fox into the new box and put it in the shade to take care of when I got back.

Brush trimming

Barry and I took off for the hills. Barry had some clippers with  him and today he wanted to cut some of the low hanging limbs off the road that normally might hit us in the head.brush2

 

I mostly watched and took photos while he worked as he had the clippers. This one was a bit too large for the clippers so he moved it out of the way.brush3

 

We stopped often to clear the trail as we rode around in the hills.brush4

 

Rest spot

Eventually we ended up in our resting spot at the Top of the World. Barry needed to do some adjusting on his hammock which took him a few tries but once he had it, he climbed in the thing while I sat on the ground.barry5

 

From there we rode around some more and eventually ended up back at my house where Barry took off for his place.

Released the fox

I had a break and them dealt with the fox in the box and let it go down the road a ways, hopefully far enough away from my house so it doesn’t return.

Trying for the other one

I sat around chair hopping the rest of the day and in the evening I set the box trap to try and catch the other fox, although this other one is more careful than the other one so I might not catch it.

I’d rather keep the foxes around to eat the mice and rats, but I just can’t have them eating all my chickens.

Nice day.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to Dealing With Foxes and a Dirt Bike Ride In the Hills

  1. don striepeke says:

    hey bob i know youll have fun making a auto chick door are you aware amazon has both light and time activated doors

    • Bob says:

      Hi Don,
      I’ve seen several types on YouTube. I guess it would be a good idea to at least check them out. I’ll likely build my own to work with my gate that has a weighted can on pulleys to open it now.
      Thanks, Bob

  2. Ken+Solbakken says:

    I really have got to hand it to you. Your compassion for nature and animals is far more than most of us could tolerate. As you and I talked about, aging, it works on us in many ways and our empathy for nature and animals seems to increases a lot, realizing our mortality. Is it that our testosterone levels drop? Or finally we see, (animals and humans) are struggling for survival in this crazy world? Thanks again for your informative and concerning posts.
    Ken

  3. Nancy K says:

    I was just going to say they usually travel in pairs and this time of year, she may have babies in a den somewhere. Hope you didn’t move them TOO far away. I watch them on my game camera almost every night!!

    You might want to get TWO hammocks!! It’s sure the perfect spot to rest up.

    • Bob says:

      You seem to be an exceptionally wise older bird. :O) Pups in our area should be weaned by now. But anyway, I’ll never get the other one in the trap from what I see, so I need to adapt and not let my chickens out, except later in the day. I’m sure there are more foxes out there and no use fighting a losing battle. And besides those same foxes are what helps keep the rat population down which has become an increasing problem in our area. Too many people feed their pets outside and too many people feed the wild birds which is a great source for the rats, the bird feed I mean.
      Thanks for the input,
      Bob

      • Nancy K says:

        I thought the fox were after dog food around here, so that’s what I used to draw them in for a view with my camera. They didn’t eat one bite. They also don’t particularly care for cooked meat. They would only eat it raw. I didn’t put anything out after that and they got rid of every gopher in my yard.

Comments are closed.