Coyotes are present in Stamford, so we need to make sure you can identify them. Some people can mistake them for a dog (like I did 5 years ago) or a fox, like my pilot did today. We were about to take off (in an un-AC'd prop plane) from Tupelo MS, when the pilot came on the loudspeaker and said, "Awlraght, folks. We're gonna have to wait here for a few minutes. We've got a fox on the runway- a large fox- you can see him right out the window. We don't want to run him over, so we'll just wait 'til they come chase him off. It'll be just a few minutes, then we'll be on the way to Memphis."Getting off the plane in Memphis, I said to the pilot: How big was the fox?
Pilot: Big!
Me: Like, how big? (I hold up hands, three feet apart.)
No, bigger. Actually, it was coyote.
Me to sis on phone after I get back to CT: Who mistakes a coyote for a fox?
Sis: Probably a lot of people.
Me: A coyote is like, three times the size of a fox. Foxes are tiny.
Sis: I know, but a lot of people don't know what they look like.
I act all hoity-toity with my fox knowledge, but I really only know about their size by chance. I went to a "field party" in high school (Va.), and we drove down a dirt road through a corn field to get there. Right in front of us, little foxes kept jumping out of the corn, trotting along in our headlights like they were leading a parade, then leaping back into the tall grass/corn. Repeat. Hop out of the corn, trot in the headlights, hop back into the corn. It was like leapfrog; I have no idea if it was just one fox messing with us or a whole band of them. In any case, they were the size of a large cat.
Oh! I thought. That's why our high school mascot is the fox! I had never known foxes were such a presence, I guess because I don't frequent the woods at night.
Foxes are very, very cute by the way.
Um OK actually YOU be the judge. Is this photo on the right a fox or a coyote?On this person's website, he calls it a fox, but I swear it looks like a coyote! Is this a fox-like coyote, or did that man, like my pilot, mistake a coyote for a fox? This is a photo from Wisconsin, if that helps.
Info from another website seems to confirm my opinion: Dr. Cavallini's research concludes that "body size of the red fox may be variable even within a small area," but also suggests that the average red fox, wherever it is found in the world, is a much smaller animal than commonly believed, and that even in the regions with notably "big" fox, the average fox weighs only between 13.7 and 16 pounds.
I may not know much about foxes... but it seems like I know enough. If you think you see a fox, and it's the size of a dog... it is probably a coyote.
Previous Stamford Talk posts about coyotes:
Jan 14, 2008- Ahoooooooooooooo: Coyotes in Stamford
