Fox Family Leaves Trappers in the Hole : Wildlife: Fish and Game officials miss their prey, will try again today to relocate them to home at L.A. Zoo.

The fate of the freeway foxes was still unresolved Friday as wildlife officials delayed their attempt to capture the famous family because the mother fox had vanished from the den.

Two trappers hired by the California Department of Fish and Game had hoped to snag the red foxes in their den alongside the Costa Mesa Freeway on Friday morning. But despite a tarp placed over the hole, the mother had crawled out in the early morning hours, so the attempt was postponed, probably until today.

“The female has escaped and left the kits, so our plans are to wait for her to come back in. We don’t want to break up the family,” said Larry Sitton, wildlife management supervisor for the Fish and Game Department’s Long Beach office.

Nine red foxes, including six kits about 6 weeks old, were found last week living in the dirt embankment on a new stretch of the freeway that is scheduled to open to traffic Tuesday.

Caltrans has agreed to delay the opening of the mile-long stretch of freeway for several days, or longer if necessary, so the foxes can be captured.

Pressured by the public, the director of the Fish and Game Department has decided to move the fox family out of the way of the road and send them to live in captivity at the Los Angeles Zoo.

The agency’s biologists originally intended to leave them in their den, because the foxes had lived near Orange County freeways for years and were adept at handling urban traffic. But overwhelming public pressure, including more than 1,000 phone calls to the Fish and Game agency, convinced director Peter Bontadelli to issue the new orders. Even Gov. Pete Wilson’s office, contacted by state legislators, got involved, asking Bontadelli’s agency to reconsider the options.

The foxes, which are not native to California, cannot be released in the wild because they prey on many of the state’s endangered species, including least terns and clapper rails at Orange County wetlands and small native foxes in Kern County. No other state wants them, so the only other choice is to keep them in the zoo.

Animal-cruelty experts had mixed feelings about the rescue.

“This case is very tricky,” said Madeline Bernstein, regional vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, as she stood near the den after the capture was postponed. “There’s great risk in leaving them and great risk in capturing them. But Fish and Game assures us it can be done safely and humanely, so we might as well do it.”

She added that the “zoo isn’t an ideal place, but it beats having them wind up in the garment district or in a fox hunt.”

Sitton said the mother, which usually stays close to her young, will return to the den eventually, probably by this morning, so the trappers will try again.

“She was probably disturbed because we had tried to seal off the den. She crawled out somehow,” he said.

An adult male and a yearling, which rove around quite a bit to hunt, have not been near the family lately, so they probably will not be captured and will be allowed to remain free.

Also, one of the six kits has not been seen lately. It apparently had been injured recently in the hind legs, and may be sick or dead, Sitton said.

The two trappers, one a federal agricultural official and one a Humboldt State University researcher, will dig with shovels to widen the den, then pull the foxes out. The process can be risky to the animals, so the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and a veterinarian will be on hand.

“There’s a lot of things that can go wrong. If we see danger, then we’ll have to fall back and come up with another plan,” Sitton said.