RICHMOND, Va. — Employees at the Richmond Wildlife Center in Virginia do their best to act like mother foxes as they nurse and care for an orphaned kitten that ended up in their care.
In a video posted to the center’s Facebook page Tuesday, executive director Melissa Stanley is shown wearing a red fox mask and rubber gloves as she feeds the tiny kit from a syringe. The kit sits atop a large stuffed fox that is supposed to resemble her mother, Stanley said.
The same Facebook post explained why the staff wears the mask to feed her, minimizing human noises, creating visual barriers and taking other precautions. “It is important to ensure that the orphans raised in captivity are not imprinted or habituated to humans,” the post said.
All these measures make it more likely that the kit can one day be reintroduced into the wild.
Stanley said in an interview Tuesday that the kit was allowed into the center on Feb. 29 after a man walking his dog found her in a Richmond alley. He thought she was a kitten and turned her over to the Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She was less than 24 hours old and her umbilical stump was still attached.
Animal Center staff initially attempted to locate the kit’s mother and her den so they could reunite them. They found the den location, but were told by the site inspector that the foxes had been trapped and removed. Stanley said she suspects the fox kit fell from a trap or from the back of the trapper’s truck.
The nature center staff take turns feeding the kitten every two to four hours while wearing the fox mask. In addition to the large stuffed animal meant to mimic the kit’s mother, staff also placed a smaller stuffed red fox in her enclosure. At the end of the video, she cuddles up to the smaller stuffed animal.
“The goal is to release animals back into the wild, not only to give them a better chance of survival, but also to recognize their own kind and reproduce to continue their wild population,” Stanley said.
With that goal in mind, the center immediately began looking for other Red Fox kits of the same age and weight within the rehabilitation community. Staff found three other kits in a rehabilitation setting in northern Virginia. The fox kit will be turned over to the Animal Education and Rescue Organization, which plans to eventually release the kits back into the wild together.
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Skene contributed to this report from Baltimore.
