ieee ae UE EU eBLOUN  BoUieL Fy TeieN 13 
the back of its house and growl, it ate readily and grew rapidly. When 
first put in the cage it was about the size of a young kitten and its fur a 
reddish-gray. By mid-July it was about the size of a large fox terrier dog 
and had a fine coat of fur of typical gray fox color. Only Mr. Tagge could 
get it to come out of its house when he was around, and finally to take 
food from his hand. In July it either escaped or was let loose, and Mr. 
Tagge says he still sees it occasionally in the edge of the woods. 
Red foxes are quite common in Elk Grove. I often saw their tracks 
on the higher ground, generally hunting in pairs when they were hunting 
rabbits, but they always returned to the lower ground. When I was map- 
ping the swamp ground northwest of the caretaker’s house, a red fox 
became curious as to what I was doing and followed me for about an hour, 
at about eleven o’clock, for three days. His tracks told the story. The 
third day I decided to follow him. He evidently thought I was playing a 
game. He would keep some 25 or 30 feet ahead of me. When I stopped, 
he would stop, get up on a stump or log and watch me. When I moved 
forward again, he would move on ahead of me. I followed him clear out 
to the northwest corner of the Grove. When he came out to the open fields, 
he raced across them at a rapid rate, cutting back south to a cornfield 
where he slowed down to a trot again. He worked back southeast along 
the edge of the woods where I finally lost him when he crossed the elk 
pasture. The next day he came back for another game of hide and seek. 
The third day he had become more adventuresome and would allow me to 
get within a dozen feet of him before moving ahead. The fourth day we 
both got a surprise. I was following him along the edge of a back road, 
moving slowly because I could see him standing on a low stump behind a 
bush six feet in front of me. Suddenly a rabbit made a mighty leap from 
in front of me, landing within a foot of the fox. This surprised the fox so 
that he made twelve feet at that first leap. Evidently he had been so inter- 
ested in me that he had not noticed the rabbit at all. He raced away for 
about a hundred yards, then slowed down to his trot again, finally waiting 
for me to catch up. For two more days we played our game of hide and 
seek, then he disappeared. 
One April morning I surprised a red fox sleeping in the sun on the 
east bank of Salt Creek north of the elk pasture. I was moving west 
toward the creek, moving upwind. I did not see him as I was watching a 
cock pheasant across the creek. We both saw each other when I was 
within about a foot. He made a mighty leap toward the opposite bank 
fourteen feet away. He landed with a splash some three feet from shore, 
swam out and dashed about one hundred yards across the meadow, then 
stopped, shook himself, looked back to see what kind of creature had dis- 
turbed him, then trotted off into the underbrush. During the summer I 
found two fox dens and had the opportunity of watching their families 
from the vantage point of neighboring trees. One den was north of the 
elk pasture on a little bare knoll in the heavy woods; the other was south of 
Higgins Road near the eastern boundary of the preserve. 
Raccoon, opossum, mink and weasels are also fairly common in this 
same area. I found raccoon dens on five different occasions in the spring, 
