Wait for Fox to Trot Home Is Becoming Frustrating

Wildlife officials worked into the night Saturday trying to bait and catch the freeway foxes that have captured the hearts of animal lovers but eluded state trappers for several days.

Trappers working for the California Department of Fish and Game were waiting Saturday night for the mother fox to return to the den, where six kits are inside. Upon the mother’s return, the trappers planned to pull all of them out and take them to a new home at the Los Angeles Zoo.

But if the mother did not go into the den Saturday night, state wildlife officials were planning to remove the kits Sunday morning and possibly leave their mother in the wild. An adult male fox, which carouses and rarely visits its family, and a yearling that also strays often from the den were also expected to remain free.

At about 7 p.m. Saturday, the mother fox returned to the area but stayed outside the hole, forcing trappers to camp about a quarter-mile away, watching through binoculars.

The scene, on an empty stretch of the Costa Mesa Freeway scheduled to open Tuesday to traffic, also included families peering over an empty overpass and TV and media crews that had gathered for the capture.

The saga of the foxes started last week, when a construction worker found the den in a dirt embankment along the 1-mile stretch of newly built freeway.

Fish and Game biologists wanted to leave the foxes--which are agile, quick animals that have safely lived alongside the county’s freeways for several years--where they were and let them move themselves when traffic begins.

But the decision was taken out of their hands Tuesday when, after hearing from outraged legislators and animal lovers, the agency’s director, Peter F. Bontadelli, told the biologists to move them. Even Gov. Pete Wilson got involved when his office reportedly told Bontadelli to consider the options.

“We’re reacting to the pressure caused by public contact with legislators and the governor,” said Larry Sitton, wildlife management supervisor at the Southern California office of Fish and Game. “This male and female have lived successfully around freeways for several years. They have even brought up several litters. But my boss issued new orders to react to the public pressure.”

Fish and Game received more than 1,000 phone calls, mostly from people who demanded that the fox family be captured and relocated away from traffic.

Madeline Bernstein, regional vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said the public outpouring is not surprising.

“An animal in distress will create this kind of public display, unless it’s a cockroach,” she said.

But although they are adored by the public, the foxes--which are not native to California--are Public Enemy No. 1 to wildlife biologists, because they prey on some of the state’s most rare and endangered animals.

And capturing the agile foxes is not an easy task. The experienced trappers, one a Humboldt State University graduate student and another with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, worried that the den might cave in if they have to dig the animals out.

Animal-cruelty experts also had mixed feelings about the need for the rescue because it could be dangerous to the foxes.

The foxes are expected to be neutered and held in cages at the Los Angeles Zoo for 30 days of quarantine. Then they will be released in the zoo’s North American mammal section, a landscaped display area that measures about 40 by 25 feet, said Michael Dee, the zoo’s curator of mammals.

The zoo--which already has one male and one female fox, both aging--volunteered to take the foxes. Dee said they are common animals, but he decided to help the state out by giving them a home.

Sitton said Fish and Game has misgivings about placing the foxes in captivity, but the department had no other choice because wildlife officials from other states will not accept them.

Red foxes were imported to California from eastern states and Europe decades ago. They could not be freed anywhere else in California because they menace many of the state’s native animals.