Chapter 14

The Fox Who Stole Hearts

In folklore, no animal is as omnipresent as the fox. Its slyness is legendary, its charm magical. When a beautiful woman is called foxy, it is an echo of the ancient archetype of shape-shifting vixen who transform to become attractive human females, irresistible in their appeal. There is an ancient Chinese belief that a fox may take human form at age fifty. By one hundred, it may have knowledge of things a thousand miles away, and at one thousand years, become the celestial fox, beyond human control and communicating directly with Heaven.

Sweet Pea

Martinique Beach wraps itself around the Atlantic Ocean in a gentle curve of almost five kilometres. It is the longest white sand beach in Nova Scotia, home to beautiful dunes and endangered wildlife. In the spring of 2001, it was also the temporary home of an orphaned red fox, a small orange stranger too young to be on its own, cowering under a boardwalk for shelter, safety, and the picnic scraps it scavenged for food.

The phone rang at Hope for Wildlife.

“Look, there’s a little fox here on Martinique Beach that seems to be in distress,” the man on the other end told Hope Swinimer. “Its mom was killed by a car and everybody’s been feeding it. It’s just sort of hanging out. Can you do anything for it?”

Swinimer was concerned, but not overly so. This was the first she had heard of it, and the founder of Hope for Wildlife had long ago learned that one call usually doesn’t guarantee an emergency. As it turned out, that call was just the start and the emergency was real.

“My phone just continued to ring after that, call after call after call, all about this little tiny fox pup, so then I was getting concerned,” said Swinimer. “We were thinking about sending a trap down to see if we could catch it. From what the callers were telling me, it sounded like it was way too young to be there on its own.”

Things developed quickly from there. The very next day, Swinimer received a call that a German shepherd had attacked the kit, leaving it injured and in desperate need of help. The man who called said he’d be happy to watch a live trap if Hope for Wildlife would lend him one. Within hours, the trap was set up at the beach.

“I’ll always remember. It was seven o’clock Sunday morning, a beautiful summer morning in early July. He pulled into my yard and opened his trunk as I started down to meet him. Then he reached in and pulled out the saddest looking fox I’d ever seen. That little fox was no more than two pounds, and looked near death at that point. She couldn’t use one of her hind legs at all.”

This was Sunday and Swinimer immediately started stabilization procedures that would keep the kit going until she could take her to a veterinarian Monday morning. She warmed the little fox up and got some fluids into her. A lot of people, she said, harm an obviously thirsty and malnourished baby animal by giving them milk first.

“I didn’t start her on milk right away because that’s the worst thing you can do with a dehydrated animal. It’s essential to rehydrate them first,” explained Swinimer. “We did that for about twelve hours, then gave her just a little bit of milk that night. The next morning, we took her in to the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital.”

The little fox had been bedding down in a thick growth of beach pea under the seaside boardwalk so Swinimer named her Sweet Pea. The x-rays did not look promising and it was obvious this fox was a mess. Dr. Ian McKay could tell the animal suffered from rickets from its poor diet in the month spent on the beach. Sweet Pea had been fed or scavenged leftover junk food, not a good diet for a growing fox, and the result had been a crippling lack of vitamin D, the cause of rickets. The things Dr. McKay found wrong were serious, long term, and not curable. There were growth problems in the spinal cord, calcified discs, leg bones that weren’t developing properly, and from what he could tell, this fox was in serious pain. Swinimer decided to put her on pain killers and see if rehab would help, but even she, who always hated the idea of euthanizing, knew that the possibility of not saving this fox was right there, staring at them.

About Foxes

In a family history going back forty million years, foxes can track a genetic connection to wolves, coyotes, dogs, and jackals. There are five or six species of foxes in North America: red fox, grey fox, arctic fox, swift fox, kit fox, and possibly the island fox. Only the first three are plentiful.

“We tried so many things to get Sweet Pea back up and going, and there were many times we thought we should probably euthanize and give up on her,” she said. “She was in pain, and even though we had her on pain meds and tried to make her comfortable, it was difficult. For about four months, we tried to get her to use her leg and not walk with her back all hunched up. We even had acupuncture done on her. There was only one vet in the area doing acupuncture at that time and that was Dr. Laura Lee. She did a wonderful job, and the acupuncture actually seemed to give her some relief.”

Nothing could be done about the malformed leg bones. They simply had not grown properly, and no amount of rehabilitation would change that. Despite everything that had been done medically, Sweet Pea still could not use her right rear leg. It was a ticking time bomb, and one day in early fall Swinimer was home and busy when she heard an unearthly wail coming from Sweet Pea’s pen.

Sweet Pea, Hope, and a young admirer.

“I ran down to the enclosure, and somehow she had broken, totally snapped off, her hind leg,” Swinimer remembered. “She was just screaming in pain. We rushed her to the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital.”

Dr. Paul Robb was on duty. He took one look at Sweet Pea, then at Hope, and said what she didn’t want to hear: “Hope, we should euthanize.”

He had always been against keeping a wild animal if it could not be released. It was not that he believed wild creatures should go unaided, but he felt that if they were meant to be wild, they should be wild. It was obvious now that nothing could ever be done to make Sweet Pea into a wild animal. The leg damage was beyond repair.

Coyotes and Foxes

An influx of coyotes is bad news for foxes. They compete for the same food in the same habitat, and the larger, stronger, and faster-breeding coyotes will kill or drive out a resident fox population as they move into an area.

“This leg just could not be fixed. Our surgeons are great at orthopedic work, but there was no way to repair this leg. Because of the rickets, the bones were just too weak. To be honest, I guess we’d known all along that her whole life would be a struggle in some way,” Swinimer said.

Why didn’t she put her down? Swinimer had been asking herself that over the previous four months. Dr. McKay had told her to do it the first time he saw Sweet Pea. Things had not only failed to improve since then, they had gotten worse. Now Dr. Robb was recommending it again. It seemed a simple and obvious decision, but to Swinimer it wasn’t. There was something about this little fox that made her hesitate, even then.

“Normally, we would never have gone to this degree, but there were a number of factors that played into it,” she said. “First of all, there was the emotional side. She was beautiful, and comfortable around people. She would look at you and seem to be saying, ‘Help me!’ It was amazing how she interacted with all the volunteers. No animal had done it the way she did.”

There was something else, though. In just half a year, she had become a star.

“Sweet Pea had this huge fan base out there, all down the Eastern Shore,” explained Swinimer. “Everybody loved Sweet Pea, everybody was talking about Sweet Pea. I’d get dozens of calls every month asking how Sweet Pea was doing. They were from people who knew her at Martinique, and friends of people who had known her at Martinique. People just knew her. She was a famous fox.”

Dr. Robb knew Sweet Pea’s history. He was aware Swinimer and her people had been working very hard to save her, that the community loved her, and also that she was an extremely easy-going little fox, so he finally gave in and amputated the leg. Everyone waited to see how the long-suffering little animal would react, and were overjoyed when suddenly she began to thrive.

“She got along really fine, even great, on three legs,” Swinimer said. “It seemed like from that point on, her life became much better. Her health improved, everything overall was better for her. She was playful and filled a really important role at the rehabilitation centre.”

Swinimer had hoped to use Sweet Pea to educate people about foxes and their place in nature, and this became an important part of her work at Hope for Wildlife. However, during Sweet Pea’s second spring the staff decided to see what would happen if they placed her with the unruly crowd of orphaned kits, the “foxes in boxes” that required so much of their attention each year.

“We were quite nervous because we didn’t know whether it would be a good thing or not. There was always the chance that she would kill them,” Swinimer said. “We got her doing that right away, and it just went so beautifully. There was a lot of vocalization at first, but then they started to play and interact, and we knew everything would be just fine.”

Workers said it looked like a den mother laying down the rules for the new bunch of kids. The vocalizing was mostly hers, the little ones taking it in, a bit unsure. Swinimer said it was impressive.

“If you’ve ever heard foxes talk, it’s really cool!” she added.

Fox pups are close-knit families who need that dominant influence of an adult, and Sweet Pea filled this important role for all the fox pups at Hope for Wildlife up until the last summer of her life. Every year she’d get ten or so pups to oversee, play, and interact with, and every fall, all the little foxes would be released, and she’d be left behind. The Hope for Wildlife workers always wondered about that. These had not really been her kits, but they were like adopted or fostered children to her, and the staff believed having a family one day and none the next must have had some effect.

“We always noticed for a week or two after they all left, she’d be really quiet and aloof, and we never knew whether she was just glad to have the kids out of the house, or if she really was lonely and missed them,” Swinimer said.

Every spring, about a dozen fox kits arrive at Hope for Wildlife. They are a handful for human workers, but during her stay, Sweet Pea kept them in line.

Even in the long fall and winter months without little foxes around her, Sweet Pea was never alone. Everyone who visited the Hope for Wildlife rehabilitation centre wanted to see her, and with every tour that came through, she was always the centre of attention. The question of when they were going to see Sweet Pea was always on someone’s lips, especially with school groups.

“All the kids knew her, everybody knew her. She wasn’t always the favourite animal, but at the end of each tour I’d ask the kids who their favourite animal was, and nine times out of ten, they’d say Sweet Pea,” Swinimer remembered. “She won the hearts and souls of so many people.”

Everyone wanted a photograph of Sweet Pea, and film crews on the Hope for Wildlife site for news or features always seemed to find a way to include a clip of her. Her image started popping up in strange places. On one occasion, someone faxed Swinimer a poster from an anti-fur farming group that had started appearing on walls, bulletin boards, and lampposts in the Halifax area. Swinimer had to look twice. It featured a photograph of her fox.

Remembering a Fox

“The one thing I will always remember about Sweet Pea is that she was unlike humans who dwell on the small things in life. She had only three legs but went about every day like she had all four and not a care in the world. If you didn’t see her up close, you would have no idea she only had three.”

—Sabrina Horne, Hope for Wildlife worker

“Did you know Sweet Pea was the poster child for the anti-fur movement?” was the message with it.

Swinimer hadn’t known.

“It was a big poster, bashing fur farming, and it was Sweet Pea’s picture. They’d been out to the farm one time. But it was tastefully done, and I quite liked it, because it was Sweet Pea. Of course, she was so photogenic that her pictures ended up all over the place. That’s why you have to be careful when people take pictures. I like to authorize things like that,” she said.

With any wild animal, no matter how long they have been held or how drastic their handicap, there always remains the instinct to escape. Sweet Pea was no different from the others and she got out several times. An organization like Hope for Wildlife, which relies on a large volunteer staff, affords ample opportunity for a wily animal to study its keepers and over time identify the ones it thinks it can pull something over on. Sometimes, they will almost seem to have a thing for escaping on a certain volunteer. With Sweet Pea, that person was Hope for Wildlife’s longest serving staffer, Ronda Brennan, the person Hope Swinimer has relied on for years and refers to as “my rock.”

Brennan had a deep affection for the fox.

“What I remember most is her sweet nature, and how she’d come for you to scratch her neck because she couldn’t do it herself with a missing back leg. You’d give her a scratch, and could see her hip moving where her leg had been.”

Foster mother Sweet Pea gets affection from a late-summer kit.

Trust did not come quickly or easily with Sweet Pea, according to Brennan. Shy at first with almost everyone, she would peek out and watch carefully from her little shelter until she was sure. Then, if you were lucky, she might let you scratch her.

“She escaped on me at least twice, though,” said Brennan. “The first time was my own fault for not obeying one of the basic rules.”

It was early in her stay in Seaforth and the fox was penned next to a group of raccoons. Brennan had opened the door and leaned in to do something, but glanced at the other animals, not focusing on Sweet Pea, and the fox shot past her. Brennan instantly knew what she hadn’t done, and with a fox, even a three-legged one, it only took an instant.

One of the things that won Sweet Pea the hearts of visitors was her ability to pose for a perfect photo.

“I didn’t go in and shut the door, I just leaned in, and she slipped right under the door and past me. And she was gone, out of the big barn and everything,” Brennan said. “She came and went until they put food out and caught her.”

Swinimer said Sweet Pea had a habit of lulling workers into a false sense of security. She was a real escape artist, deceptively quick, who never took her eyes off the door. It was a total mistake to look at her standing in her pen on three legs and think of her as handicapped. Volunteer Bobby Wilson agreed.

“The one thing I will remember about Sweet Pea is the picture I have in my mind of her running as fast as she could up the hill at the farm after she had just been let out by mistake,” Wilson said. “You couldn’t see that she only had three legs, so she didn’t look ‘disabled’ at all. Fortunately, she came back after four or five days, very hungry and very tired.”

The escape of any animal is a serious matter at the Seaforth facility. It backs onto wild country that calls to those in the pens, but if an animal has the ability to survive there, it would already have been released. This was always a worry for Swinimer. While part of her wanted to see all of her charges back in the wild, another voice told her that releasing them to certain death would be even crueler than captivity. She knew, for example, that Sweet Pea, on three legs and with no hunting skills, would have a very short life outside. After the first few escapes, however, she felt a bit more secure about the fox than she did with other animals.

“I always worry about my captive animals because I have such mixed feelings,” she explained, “but the part that always impressed me with Sweet Pea was she never went far, and she always came back. We didn’t need to live trap her. She’d just return, we’d hold out our hand with a piece of meat, she’d come on over, and we’d pick her up and pop her back in her unit. She’d stay away sometimes for a full week, though. I think she’d go out, have her fun, and then home she’d come. She always knew where her meals came from.”

By the summer of 2009, it became apparent that Sweet Pea was not herself. She was eight that spring, entering old age in the world of the fox. In the wild, foxes can live up to ten years, but few make it even close to that, most only lasting two to four. Disease, highway accidents, and hunting take a heavy toll. This was the first year Sweet Pea would not tolerate the newborn foxes she had always been so excited about. She grew quieter and more reclusive as the summer slipped by, and as autumn came, she was no longer eating well.

By Christmas, the end was near, and just after the New Year, Sweet Pea was rushed to hospital. For the third time in her life, a doctor said there was no hope and that she should be euthanized. This time there was no argument.

“I knew how many people loved her, so I took her back to the farm for a few more days for goodbyes, with the full intention of euthanizing her on the Thursday,” Swinimer said. “I was just giving everyone a chance to come over and say goodbye, and a lot of people did get that chance.”

In the end, Sweet Pea avoided for a third time what she had avoided twice before. On the Wednesday afternoon, volunteers Bobby Wilson and Karla Henderson were with her and Henderson, a former nurse, saw that she was dying. The two women put her in a container and started driving to Dartmouth so Swinimer could say her farewell before it was too late.

On Main Street, only a few blocks from the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital, they were pulled over for speeding. Henderson frantically tried to explain to the metro police officer that there was a dying fox in the back seat and they had to get to the veterinary hospital. The young policeman had no idea what he had on his hands and just kept repeating “Are you going to cooperate or not?” refusing all requests to look in the container. According to Henderson, by the time he eventually let them go, ten minutes had passed and Sweet Pea was gone.

When the ground thawed in April, Swinimer buried Sweet Pea at the farm, in her wildflower garden. A worker at the hospital had taken a ceramic paw print to be used as Sweet Pea’s grave marker.

Henderson commemorated her with this poem:

Run, Sweet Pea, Run!

This is the time of year you most notice a fox,
a wily orange blur past white snow and dark spruce
writ large in our consciousness:
Kit. Swift. Cape. Silver.
Cunning King in Luke 13.
Vulpes vulpes for the scientist.
Reynard for the English folklorist, Regin or vixen for the German.
Disney caricatures for Robin Hood and Maid Marion.
The Fox! In Stravinsky’s Renard, and barter for the Voyageurs.
These are people’s foxes.

But you, Sweet Pea?

You’ve made us fox-people for nine years.
A jetsam orphan on the Eastern Shore, bedding down
on wild pea under a boardwalk;
a Shepherd is your second foe,
rickets, your third, and you lose a leg.
Amid this chaos, you must wonder Is this life? Is anybody there?
Hope arrives with meat and mice and might
and before long, the word gets around of
a little orange piñata brimming with treasures.

Oh! The hats you don:
Mama tutor to young kits,
patient for the most part with all those foxes in boxes.
Star attraction for old and young
who chant your name up the drive with great anticipation.
Favourite resident for volunteers
searching for your acknowledgement, carting your cuisine closer:
Oh, hello, you greet them as gentle as your footfall.
A fugitive, three times busting out of Dodge;
we fret daily, nightly: Is she back?

Mostly, though, you rescue us—
From thinking that society and nature have nothing in common.
From thinking there is no such thing as love at first sight.

Thank you, fearless little friend.
Long may you run!

Karla J. Henderson

January 2010