Trappers Remove Mother, 6 Pups From Freeway Foxhole

A wily mother red fox and her brood of six pups were captured from their freeway home Sunday after three days of waiting, watching, digging and chasing by a dogged crew of wildlife officials.

The well-publicized saga of Orange County’s freeway foxes ended shortly after sunset, about 10 days after the den was found along a 1-mile extension of the Costa Mesa Freeway scheduled to open to traffic Tuesday.

The mother fox and her 12-week-old pups, captured by a team led by the California Department of Fish and Game, were later reported safe at their new home at the Los Angeles Zoo.

“This isn’t pretty, but it’s the best way to do it,” an exhausted, yet relieved, Jeff Lewis said earlier, as he and six other people dug into the den to excavate the last pup. “If I was that fox in that den, I’d be scared stiff. But we just don’t have any other choice.”

“We didn’t want to break up the family,” added Larry Sitton, wildlife management supervisor for the California Department of Fish and Game’s Long Beach office.

Sitton said the hardest part was trapping the mother fox, who hovered on the edge of all the commotion for days before finally stepping into a special trap that had been set near her den.

The state agency’s wildlife biologists had intended to leave the foxes be and let them move on when the freeway traffic began. Red foxes are agile, nocturnal animals that have lived alongside Orange County’s freeways for several years, biologists said.

However, besieged by calls from angry state legislators, the media and animal lovers--including a request by Gov. Pete Wilson to resolve the issue--agency director Pete Bontadelli told the biologists to capture the animals.

Sitton expressed misgivings about putting the foxes in captivity, but they could not be freed in California because they are not native to the state and prey upon many native animals, including such rare birds as the least tern. And other states will not accept them.

Capturing the foxes was an on-again, off-again task. Two trappers staked out the den all night Friday and Saturday, watching through binoculars and waiting for the mother to return so that she and all six pups could be trapped together.

But the mother fox apparently was wise to the human activity and refused to stay inside for long. Finally, at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday, she slipped into the den and grabbed a pup, then ran to another hole she had dug and dropped the baby inside.

Like some sort of bizarre “fox rodeo,” Fish and Game officials and a veterinarian chased after the mother fox by foot and in a truck, hoping to get close enough to stun her with a tranquilizer gun. But she easily outran them.

That was when the team decided to go in after the pups. At about 5 a.m., trappers Craig Knight and Lewis picked up shovels and began digging as the mother fox watched from 100 yards away, barking.

Finally, after about two hours of digging, a trapper, wearing heavy welder’s gloves, reached into the hole and pulled out the first of five yelping, clawing, biting pups.

A few hours later, a metal trap, its jaws softened with rubber, was set to catch the mother fox. Around sunset, she returned to the den and, though cautiously nosing up to look for the pups, stepped into the trap.

“We got the vixen! And she’s fine. I didn’t think we’d catch her,” Fish and Game field supervisor John Massie said. “That’s one smart fox.”

Minutes later, the last pup was pulled from the hole.

The fox family patriarch and a yearling that also lived in the den were not captured and officials said they would be left in the urban wild.