Peculiar fate of Jas'ka the red fox that became our pet

Co-author: Irina Rotenko

To be a pet being a wild born red fox is already a peculiar and uncommon for the red fox individual. The story took place in 2013.

Doing study on wolf breeding in Naliboki Forest, we were searching for wolf dens. In the Drazdy locality we discovered a wolf den with small pups that was situated in red fox earth. The vixen had been killed by the parent wolves, and the majority of her cubs had died or were killed by the wolves too. It looked like the tragedy in red fox family life had happened 6 to 8 days before. Only one red fox cub by lucky chance appeared at the edge of inundated swampy spot. The cub could drink water and thus was still alive. It was starving and got bitten by numerous mosquitos. We took the poor red fox cub and brought it at home in Navusts' steading within the same Naliboki Forest. We began calling it Jas'ka. Jas'ka was a male.

Jas'ka the red fox cub in a week after we took it from the forest.

The wolf den in the recent red fox earth in the Drazdy locality, where Jas'ka was born. The parent wolves, which extirpated the red fox family of Jas'ka.

Small Jas'ka is eating food in our house.

Jas'ka was starving and too small taking into account his teeth development, and we assumed that Jas'ka would never become a big red fox. Anyway we fed Jas'ka with the best nutritious food, and surprisingly Jas'ka started growing fast and became quite opposite - an outstandingly big red fox.

It is worthwhile to notice that Jas'ka was growing with two our dachshunds.

Jas'ka is resting in his enclosure. To be honest, it is worthwhile to add that Jas'ka liked a lot his enclosure. He evaluated his enclosure as his own house. There was no any problem to get him in the enclosure, but not every time it was easy to catch him in the enclosure for a walk. Jas'ka made plenty of food cashes in the enclosure. Particularly, he would like to hide eggs. Once, while cleaning the enclosure, we found more than twenty eggs gradually cashed by Jas'ka.

We usually realeased Jas'ka for walking in the wild around our house in Navusts' in Naliboki Forest. Usually he walked one to two days and came back at Navusts' steading. Once Jas'ka did not returned. We found out that he was killed by the dog family (mother and two adult suns) in the neighboring hamlet. They killed and consumed Jas'ka. There was merely remained tail and the collar on the tragedy spot. Jas'ka approached the dogs, because of, being raised with two dogs, Jas'ka did not feel any danger from them. Perhaps, he would like to play with the dogs, but they caught and killed him.