Baby Fox Peruses Kmart

snopes · #1 27 September 2009, 04:35 AM

The 911 calls started coming in just minutes after a baby fox was spotted in a Gainesville parking lot.

http://www.news4jax.com/news/21108782/detail.html

Artemis · #2 27 September 2009, 04:58 AM

Aww, the story ends with fox baby being put down.

purpleiguana · #3 27 September 2009, 02:30 PM

It was a baby fox coming up to humans, and they thought it was rabid, so they killed it. Let's think about that... a baby fox going up to humans... where was mama fox? Probably dead, or baby most likely wouldn't have wandered too far away. (No, I don't have any actual cites for this supposition, apart from the general knowledge sort of fact that we aren't overrun with baby foxes wandering everywhere.) And it was young, so it likely hadn't figured out to be scared of people yet. And even if it were fully grown, and the strongest fox that ever there was, foxes aren't really a threat toward humans.

Now, all that aside, if an animal is rabid, I'm all for keeping people and other animals safe, but the story doesn't suggest anything that would make anyone assume that the fox might have been rabid except for the fact that it was coming up to people. And yeah, when an otherwise wild animal starts getting overly friendly with people, especially when they are usually very shy of people, rabies is a very real concern.

But all the same, I point to my first paragraph. If this baby had been abandoned by its mother or if its mother had been killed and it had been forced to forage for its own survival, and hadn't yet figured out to be scared of people... I guess you get killed for that. No, I don't know that's exactly how it happened, but it is a possibility. There's no way they could have tranked it or something? Had a vet look it over and then ship it to a zoo or wildlife sanctuary? I just get sad at the thought of things being killed for (possibly) no reason at all.