War Weary

We've had another early morning visit from the Interloper. No rain this time but he looks rather battered, with fresh scabs on his neck and lower jaw. It could just be a case of too much scratching, but I wonder sometimes whether his blind eye causes him to bump into objects such as fences. Though surely his whiskers should alert him to danger?

You can see some of the marks in the photo below, together with a scratch on his shoulder that's been there for several days. Could he have been attacked by a cat, perhaps? Unless the Old Dogfox is radically more aggressive when outside of the garden (and that's not likely) I cannot see that these were inflicted by another fox.



One matter to ponder over: in the days before I knew better than to let cats roam outside, I had a tiny terror of a feline named Chad. He often ended up in a scrap with some bad boy alleycats and the wounds he incurred were fairly similar to those now visible on the Interloper.

For all his scars, he is a magnificent fox, though he lacks the "seasoned with age" look of the Old Dogfox. Opportunities to photograph him in daylight are fairly rare so I made the most of this morning.

I've updated several pages on the site lately. About Foxes now contains a Fox Physics page. This shows the size of foxes compared to common dog breeds and has a few interesting facts and figures. Fox Behaviour has been redone to include photos of common fox "talk" (e.g. what a fox holding a brush high is saying). And the Games page now has a fox crossword!