From the posts lately, I can tell that Michigan and Minnesota are pretty well snowed-in. New Hampshire has it’s fair share too – I think we got roughly 30 inches over the last two weeks. Supposedly we have another foot or two coming this week…..oh, joy. As it is, I’ve lost my practice jumps in the backyard.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep…..until you try to slog through the snow to get there.
Shane decided to take his new cross country skis for a try in the yard. Cross country skiing is WAY harder than it looks! I think I’m more of a snowshoe person.
Louie and Pieka are enjoying the snow. Well…..Louie enjoys the snow where we’ve shoveled or Pieka has created a path. Otherwise, he would get lost. But he can still kick Pieka’s butt! Attack of the Killer Shih Tzu:
Louie, triumphant (if snowy) after his victory:
And…..we’ve had a foxy visitor at our house. We think that she (or he) is scoping out our drainage ditch for a den. It has entrances on either side of our yard and there are little foxy prints at both ends. She spent the afternoon just hanging out and digging around. Shane took these pictures through the front window, she’d hide in the woods if he came out.
It is going to be BAD if we have a little of fox kits here this spring. I am all for “letting nature take its course” in theory. In practice, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in you-know-where of me watching fox kits starve or be unhealthy. Not gonna happen. If she has selected us for her home, I sure hope she’s a good mommy!
X-country skiing is harder to learn then snowshoeing; snowshoeing you don’t need a trial or packed snow…x-country skiing you don’t either but it sure makes it easier. snowshoeing you can maneuver easier through tight woods. The skiis now days do not need waxing, you use to have to have different wax for different temperatures and if you didn’t have the right wax forget it. For pure exercise cross-country skiing can’t be beat, and get on a nice packed trail and it can be like poetry.
Don’t worry about the Foxes they are very clever and they know how to adapt. I use to feed my Foxes ivermectin laced canned dog food…so they wouldn’t get heartworm and they would get wormed. You can also order an edible vaccine for distemper from Department of Natural resources, I think I got mine from Virgina.
The foxes are so incrediblY cute and fun to watch. They also are messy and stinky by bringing their dinner to their den and leaving body parts laying around.
They are great at keeping rodent and snake populations under control…when they are not working on the extinction of my guenia hen population.
I love the 3rd picture of Louie and Pieka, they look like two sharks leaping out of the water fighting.
Terrific idea about the edible vaccines. I had considered the wormer and will definitely do that. What is their “preferred” eating times? There are things far bigger and badder in our woods than foxes – I can’t leave food sitting around for too long, I’d prefer not to have the (enormous) coyotes or black bear in our front yard!
Oh man you have Black Bears? I miss them so much, they always added so much interest to life in Minnesota. I have seen many Wolves in the wild but never a Coyote.
If you put food right by their den they will eat it no matter the time. They are nocturnal but don’t miss an opportunity.
Well, we have never had a black bear in our yard….and I’d like to keep it that way! There are plenty of them in New Hampshire, though they are usually pretty shy. They can be really destructive when they think there is an easy source of food nearby. A black bear bulldozed through a nearby friend’s fence and gate to get to a bird feeder a couple of years ago….and they have seen him/her several times since.
As far as coyotes…wow. We had lots of coyotes in Ohio, but they were relatively small things. Maybe 35-40 pounds. Dangerous to chickens, new lambs/calves, etc. but that’s about it, relatively timid too. Up here, they are HUGE. I have seen several and they are enormous, sable creatures. I saw two scoping out our fence line at dawn – they were easily as large as Pieka, and I think one outweighed her by at least 15 pounds. I thought they were loose GSDs at first. They weren’t all that scared of me, either. The New Hampshire Dept. of Wildlife claims they have a large portion of wolf DNA from inbreeding – I don’t know enough to believe or not. We do not let the dogs out in the dark alone. If they head off into a dark corner, we go too. I don’t THINK they’d come over our fence to take on Pieka…but we’re very careful. I’ve had quite a few folks warn me that they WILL snatch little dogs quickly.
Great photos, especially Louie & Pieka’s snow fight!
Julie has been very successful with her fox care. They are a lot of fun to watch and photograph!