Day 67 | The Cute Thief

We went up to the mountains again today to wipe down our van and let it off-gas some more. I did laundry while Brett got some work done.

At lunch time Brett was sitting in the van when he spotted a creature out of the corner of his eye.

A fox was standing right outside his open door!!! She was so cute!

She must have been drawn by the smell of his sandwich. Brett moved very slowly to grab his phone so that he could snap a picture without startling her away. It turns out, he didn’t have to be so cautious. This fox was not afraid of us at all. It was clear that she had previous experience with humans….

Which reminded us! Some of our food was sitting outside! Brett ran around to the other side of the van to grab the food and put it inside.

Still, our little friend hung around. She found some stray potato chip crumbs on the ground to snack on. We also had some strawberries sitting out that we had just realized were slightly moldy. There was no trash can nearby and we really didn’t want to bring them back into the van.

Maybe this was a mistake, but we decided to throw them into the woods so that our little friend could enjoy them away from the road and from us. We definitely didn’t want to reinforce that coming up to vehicles is a good idea. Although, sadly, her confident behavior indicated that she was probably already used to hanging around humans and begging for food.

At first, our plan seemed to work. She bounded away after the strawberries! But only a few minutes later, she was back!

“Sorry girl! We’re not supposed to feed you. It’s not good for you to learn to depend on humans for food.”

I decided to continue on with the laundry but that didn’t frighten her one bit. She just stood there and watched me. She was so adorable! Then suddenly, I heard a noise and looked up. She wasn’t there anymore. “Where did she go?!”

Next thing I know, I see her running away with a box of oatmeal in her mouth.

“What in the world?! Where did she get that?!”

“Brett! She went into the van and grabbed our oatmeal!” I shouted.

Worried that it might harm her, Brett decided to chase after her but it was no use. There was deep snow in the woods and while a fox could run on top of it, Brett’s feet sank right into it.

Haha! We couldn’t stop laughing! What a naughty little fox! She just darted away as fast as she could! I bet that’s not the first time she’s stolen food!

Note: Afterward, we googled to see if it was dangerous for dogs to eat raw oatmeal since we figured the same would apply for foxes. We found out that it might cause some dehydration but it shouldn’t lead to any serious problems. Phew!

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