Hope and Sadness in the Back Yard

I have not had the camera in the yard in quite a while for the simplest and stupidest of reasons -- the batteries needed replacing and I simply never got around to doing it.

With new batteries in hand, and a complete change of season or two, I set up the camera trap last night, and took the pictures below.

And then this poor fellow wandered into the frame.

This is a very advanced case of sarcoptic mange.

In the first picture he shows up in, you can see the ear of one of my healthy fox in the lower left corner. The healthy fox exited the immediate area when this fellow showed up, but they came back into the frame when he left.

Mange in fox is very common, and if the problem is not too far gone it can generally be fixed with nothing more than food.

I have successfully treated mange with nothing more than a little extra Purina kibble.  But in a case like this, where it's advanced this far, I think there's no turning back.

This is the part that the people on the couch do not understand; wild animals do not die in hospital beds with morphine drips and Mozart on the stereo. Absent a hunter, they die from vehicle impact, disease, starvation, and predation. In fact, of all the ways that a wild animal can die, death by skilled hunter is the very best. A direct gun shot wound to the head? It is how we ourselves chose to exit this planet more times than we want to think about.

Of course there is more to mange in wild fox than lack of food.  There is a whole story to this disease, so let me set it out.

Sarcoptic mange is caused by a parasitic mite called Sarcoptes scabiei, which burrows into the skin.  Infestations of several thousand mites per square inch are possible.

Scabies mites secrete a yellowish waste that hardens into a thick crust on the skin, causing hair loss and (as the infestation progresses) lacerations and cracking of the skin. Chronic itching can cause the fox to bite and gnaw itself, and the animal can become dazed from pain and lack of sleep. Weight loss from stress can be quite rapid, and organ failure is common. Death usually follows within six months of infestation.

One of the chief causes of mange in wild fox populations is too high a fox density. Mange mites can survive a long period of time in a den, which means that effective mange control requires fox dens to be unoccupied at least one year out of every two.

In areas where fox trapping and hunting is outlawed or discouraged, however, fox population densities will often rise to the point that some dens never lie fallow.  In addition, in areas where fox populations are very high, food availability can be lead to chronic long-term hunger which can undermine the immunity system of a fox.  In such situations mange mites colonize dens and parasitize generation after generation of fox, with a fairly large number of the animals dying horrible and grisly deaths.

Death by mange is a long and nasty torture, and far more cruel than the swift death offered by a hunter's bullet or the swift chop of a working lurcher or hound.

Anyone who truly cares about animal welfare should favor a return to managed population control of animal species that have overshot their carrying capacity. Death is not an option -- all animals die. The only real question is how an animal will die and under what circumstances. Managing wildlife through regulated hunting is a far more humane alternative that death through disease, starvation and vehicle impact.

• Related Links:
  ** Mange in Red Fox
  ** Why It's Called Fox Hunting

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