Urocyonology (LITTLE GRAY FOXES) with Bill Leikam

Summary

Ologies with Alie Ward: Urocynology (Little Grey Foxes) with Bill Lecom

Release Date: May 28, 2025

In this captivating episode of Ologies with Alie Ward, humorist and science correspondent Alie Ward delves into the fascinating world of uflinary, focusing on the enigmatic gray foxes. Joined by renowned eurocynologist and conservationist Bill Lecom, the conversation traverses the intricate behaviors, social structures, and conservation challenges facing these unique canids.

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Introduction to Urocynology and the Gray Fox

Alie Ward introduces Bill Lecom, affectionately known as "the Fox Guy," highlighting his extensive work with gray foxes. Bill’s passion is evident as he explains his focus:

Bill Lecom [04:34]: "My specialty is the gray fox. And it's the most unique fox of all of them."

Bill emphasizes the gray fox's significance as the basal canid, making it genetically older than wolves and jackals, positioning it as a root species among canids.

Gray Foxes: Canine or Feline?

A central discussion point revolves around whether foxes are more akin to dogs or cats. Bill elaborates:

Bill Lecom [05:20]: "They're more like cats. I sometimes call them the canine that acts like a feline."

Gray foxes exhibit behaviors typically associated with felines, such as stalking prey and climbing trees, distinguishing them from their red fox counterparts.

Domestication and Pet Foxes

Alie probes into the rarity of pet foxes compared to dogs and cats. Bill shares his perspective on the natural habitat instincts of foxes:

Bill Lecom [06:15]: "They are in fact meant to be in the wild, not to be captive in your home."

He outlines the challenges of keeping foxes as pets, including their destructive tendencies and dietary needs, emphasizing that they thrive best in their natural environments.

Vocalizations and Communication

The conversation shifts to the unique vocalizations of gray foxes. Bill recounts an encounter that highlighted their communication:

Bill Lecom [22:17]: "I've never heard a fox bark in all my life."

He describes a gray fox's bark as resembling someone with laryngitis, adding a personal touch to the scientific observation.

Social Structure and Reproduction

Bill delves into the social dynamics of gray foxes, explaining their monogamous and polyandrous behaviors:

Bill Lecom [28:12]: "They are not a pack. They are a family unit."

He discusses the reproductive strategies, including multiple paternities within litters, which enhance genetic diversity and survivability.

Conservation Challenges: Canine Distemper

A poignant segment addresses the impact of canine distemper on gray fox populations. Bill shares his emotional experience witnessing the devastating effects:

Bill Lecom [70:29]: "In November, December of 2016, all 25 foxes were wiped out."

Despite ongoing research, prevention remains challenging, underscoring the urgent need for conservation efforts to protect these elusive creatures.

Urban Interaction and Coexistence

Alie and Bill explore the increasing interactions between gray foxes and urban environments. Bill offers practical advice for coexistence:

Bill Lecom [66:44]: "With more and more of that coming in and more and more the foxes showing up in your backyard at night usually is a good thing."

He emphasizes the ecological benefits of gray foxes, particularly their role in controlling rodent populations, advocating for humane measures to manage wildlife interactions.

Personal Anecdotes and Observations

Throughout the episode, Bill shares heartfelt stories from his fieldwork, bringing the gray foxes' world to life. From naming individual foxes to witnessing their intricate social interactions, his narratives provide a deep, personal connection to the subject matter.

Bill Lecom [77:09]: "I've always said that the gray foxes and I can expand it out into a lot of other wildlife. Are my professors. And I'm a grad student in their course and I'm being taught by them what they are all about."

Favorite Aspects of Studying Gray Foxes

When asked about his favorite aspects, Bill humbly reflects on his contributions:

Bill Lecom [75:43]: "I'm just documenting, putting down notes, moving it over into my log. And that log now is well over 2 million words."

His dedication underscores the importance of detailed observation and documentation in understanding and conserving wildlife.

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Conclusion and Future Endeavors

The episode concludes with Alie expressing her admiration for Bill and the gray foxes, promising future episodes dedicated to different fox species. Listeners are encouraged to explore more through Bill’s book, "The Road to Fox Hollow," and support conservation efforts via the Urban Wildlife Research Project.

Notable Quotes:

• Bill Lecom [05:58]: "Gray fox will eat anything except they don't like feathered small birds."
• Bill Lecom [27:21]: "It's still out there and it's still a danger to them all."
• Bill Lecom [66:44]: "You'll have a good, balanced ecosystem. And as long as we can keep that going, we're okay around here."

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Supporting Resources

• Book: The Road to Fox Hollow by Bill Lecom
• Nonprofit: Urban Wildlife Research Project
• Newsletter: Subscribe to Bill’s newsletter for updates and insights on gray foxes and other wildlife.

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This episode offers an in-depth exploration of gray foxes, blending scientific insight with personal storytelling, and underscores the critical need for conservation efforts to preserve these remarkable creatures for future generations.

Transcript

[Alie Ward]

If you love birds, there's this thing called a feather snap and it's a smart bird feeder. It brings the wilderness to your window. It has this great tech that captures photos and videos every time a bird stops by and it connects to your phone so you get alerts and bird identification. It's also solar powered. It's really beautifully designed. It's very easy to use. It's a great gift. It's good for parents, it's good for grandparents. No experience required. And if you wanna learn more, check out the Feathersnap Smart bird [e-mail] parents of tweens if you're familiar with far off drop offs dad, stop. Stop. Stop right here. Or get DMs about what's for dinner. You may be experiencing tween milestones for your son or daughter. These can start at age 9. HPV vaccination, a type of cancer prevention against certain HPV related cancers, can start then too. For most, HPV clears on its own. But for those who don't clear the virus, it can cause certain cancers later in life. Embrace this, Protect them in the next. Ask their doctor today about HPV vaccination Brought to you by Merck oh hey, it's the guy who didn't even look at your receipt before dragging a highlighter over it. Alie Ward Here it is. Here it is. The Fox episode waited years for this and it was absolutely totally different than I expected. Join me. So we're gonna address the etymology of the ology in a bit, but I do want you to know that that in researching this, Google helpfully redirected me to the search results for urology and then proctology and then once again urogynecology and I scoffed. But honestly, urosinology, it kind of involves a bit of each of those. Stick around. But this expert is just one of my favorite kinds. His study species is just woven into his everyday life and his dreams and his identity. I love all of it. And he's a retired English teacher, this Fox guy who's known as the Fox guy and is very gifted with narrative abilities like your favorite fireside storyteller. He's even written a book, 2022's the Road to Fox Hollow, which is beautifully written. And he's contributed to Canids of the World published by Princeton University Press. He's been an associate director of the North Santa Clara Resource Conservation District and he co founded the Urban Wildlife Research Project which has accomplish rigorous field research has this archive of data. Beth Pratt of our P22 episode has called him the Jane Goodall of the gray fox. And by the end of the episode, you're never going to look at foxes the same. This is like showing you a new color you never knew existed or a flavor of cake. They've been hiding in the back. And we're going to get to it. But first, quick thank you to all the patrons who submitted questions for this episode. Thank you to everyone wearing ologies merch from ologiesmerch.com Also, side note, we have smallogies, which are G rated, shorter, kid friendly episodes and those you can find anywhere you get your podcast. It's called smallogies. We linked them in the show notes too. And thank you to everyone who leaves reviews which help the show so much. I read them all and I prove it with my mouth by reading one such as this recent one from Riderway who wrote, I find myself completely lost in episodes that I thought I'd want to skip. I mean, how can a show about trees or basket weaving be fascinating? But they are. Right away, we just have really good guests. Y' all are gonna love this one. Curl up. Open your huge ears for facts about fuzzy foxes. Baby names, parental strategies, where they live, what they inherit, how to observe foxes, how tiny foxes wound up on islands, which ones need conservation, how to help the foxes, tech foxes, why a fox on the couch is worth thousands in the bush if foxes eat leftovers, and how your dog can help save their lives. Plus, what do they smell like? And at long last, what do they say with gray fox? Behavioral expert, researcher, conservationist, author, and eurocynologist Bill Lecom.

[Bill Lecom]

Okay, Bill. Like them?

[Alie Ward]

Cool.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah. And I just wanted to make a point that my specialty is the gray fox.

[Alie Ward]

Yes.

[Bill Lecom]

And it's the most unique fox of all of them.

[Alie Ward]

Is it the best fox?

[Bill Lecom]

Oh, I wouldn't say it was exactly the best fox, but it's the most unique fox. I'll put it that way. It is the base, what we call the basal canid. It's the root of all other canids that exist in the world. So it's older, genetically older than a wolf, a jackal. You name the canid on the planet. Gray fox. Is it really?

[Alie Ward]

I did not know that. And that is very exciting. Now, first off, a fox, are they more like dogs or cats?

[Bill Lecom]

They're more like cats. I sometimes call them the canine that acts like a feline. Okay. Because they do. They have a lot of characteristics that are feline.

[Alie Ward]

And so what about them? Is cat like? Is it how they stalk their prey?

[Bill Lecom]

It's part of that, but it's also the manner in which they sit. They also climb trees just like a cat would. The way they use their ears is cat like.

[Alie Ward]

And then what about them is very dog like?

[Bill Lecom]

Only probably appearance.

[Alie Ward]

Really?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, because they just reflect that cat like behavior.

[Alie Ward]

You know, we have domesticated dogs and cats, but very few people on earth have pet foxes. Why do you think that is? They're so cute.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, well, in England, more people have foxes for pets, as far as I can tell, than we do over here. My attitude is this, that they are in fact meant to be in the wild, not to be captive in your home.

[Alie Ward]

So a pet fox? No. First off, they tend to be a bit destructive indoors and they need raw meat and mental stimulation and a lot of physical activity. And it's illegal in most states in the U.S. hey, are you a certified wildlife rehabber? And the fox can't be released. Maybe. But they can never fully be potty trained. And if pet foxes have like a favorite activity, it's peeing on stuff. So much pee. What do foxes smell like? I've heard that they're musky. Very musky. Is this true?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, yeah, they are. They reflect their scat. Oh. And their scat is really. There's a whole story behind what they do and how they use their scat and so forth. It's pretty remarkable. How they use might be like a.

[Alie Ward]

Little too early in the episode to dive right into what foxes do with their business. And I mean, maybe we should skip this or what do they do? I'm all ears.

[Bill Lecom]

Oh, well, what they do is they take their fichces and they mark territory so they will defecate in areas where they want to make it known to other animals that they own this territory. So if it's another fox that comes into the area, trespasser, let's say the pair of foxes that claims the territory will fight off another, any other fox that comes into the area that trespasses onto their territory, and eventually they will chase that trespasser out of their territory. And that happens over and over again. But fairly recently, like a year and a half ago, I had gray foxes occupying a territory in my study area and a red fox came rolling into the area. And the red fox and the gray foxes were in conflict. And the end result of that was what I call the scat wars.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, dear.

[Bill Lecom]

Because what happened. What happened was that, by the way, I. I name the foxes, I give them personal names. I don't do this scientific bit because like Jane Goodall said, you know, once you get to know them, you can't dub them with a GF, you know, 42, whatever it might be, you know. So I give him names, and this one gray fox I called limos, and that means long neck in Greek because he had kind of an extended neck. I, you know, that's kind of the way I identify them. Anyway, he was marking, marking, marking and telling with his scat, this red fox to get out. And what the red fox would do would come over to where he had defecated and defecate on top of it. And it was pile on, pile on.

[Alie Ward]

Pile on, pile, like a Jenga tower.

[Bill Lecom]

And finally, finally, the red foxes left. And it was about a year later that both of the gray foxes died. We have a problem out here with canine distemper, and it's deadly, deadly, deadly to foxes and raccoons and a couple of other mammals that live nearby. And anyway, after they died, then the red foxes came back in. And that's now what I'm monitoring. I'm monitoring the red foxes instead of the gray foxes.

[Alie Ward]

And just briefly, According to the 2023 study, canine distemper virus infection in the free living wild canines. This potentially fatal malady is related to the human measles virus, and it can affect domesticated dogs, of course, but also wildlife like foxes, coyotes, wolves, skunks, raccoons, river otters, weasels, badgers, even ferrets. And at room temperature, the virus can't last that long, like less than a day. But at colder temperatures, it can live quite a bit long. Infected animals can shed it for months through pee and other things coming out of their bodies. And of course, when there is habitat loss and a lot of animals crammed densely, it spreads much more quickly. As someone who studies gray foxes, does that bum you out that it's now a red fox territory? Are you like, that's not my species?

[Bill Lecom]

That's a great question. I'm really interested in seeing how different these red foxes might be from the gray foxes. And we've just started that part of the documentation of the red foxes. I'm an ethologist, okay? And as an ethologist, you have to have a great deal of patience.

[Alie Ward]

Ethology is a study of behavior. Just a side note.

[Bill Lecom]

And you also need to have the ability to observe in detail. So if you observe in detail and document correctly, then you can build up a backlog of behavior.

[Alie Ward]

How long have you been a vulpanologist? How long have you been hanging out in the Field and looking at foxes.

[Bill Lecom]

Foxology, that's what we'll call it.

[Alie Ward]

Foxology.

[Bill Lecom]

It's not volpinology because, well, Volpe. Volpe is the main line of the fox classification. Mm, okay. But gray fox doesn't fit in there. No, gray fox is your scion.

[Alie Ward]

No, not wolfie. What?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

I didn't realize that. Well, then let's go back. Let's talk a little bit about these different not only species, but actual genus of foxes. Because foxology pulled up mostly websites selling nail polish or fishnet bodysuits. We're kind of jerry rigging a new ology here. Eurosynology, just for gray foxes. I don't want to hear a word of objection to that just because it's never been used. Because by the end of the episode you're going to be like, yes, gray foxes deserve an ology. I love them and they are special. So the gray fox predates all of these other canids. How many types of foxes are there though? I mean, I've heard of arctic foxes, red foxes. How many we got?

[Bill Lecom]

Well, it depends on who you're talking to. There are ostensibly 24.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Bill Lecom]

And some of those 24 are very rare and live in other parts of the world. And then there are overlaps. The Asian raccoon dog is considered in sort of in the fox lane, and the bat eared fox of Africa is also a part of that. And those two are the only two other canids that can climb trees.

[Alie Ward]

So yes, this checks out. Red foxes in the genus Vulpes are the most common. And other Vulpes species include the arctic fox and the kit fox, the huge eared sandy colored fennec fox, the cape fox, and of course the red fox, which is Vulpes vulpes. Now not in the Vulpes bucket is that bat eared fox of the African savannas, which looks like a jackal and it eats termites, but it's in its own genus, Otocyon. Now, also not a. Vulpes is our newly beloved gray fox. It's one of just two species in that genus. And its full name, Eurocyon cinereo argentis means silver dog tail. It's got a nice long tail. And the gray fox, it used to be the most prevalent fox in pre colonized North America, but like so many things being disrupted, it's been edged out by the larger red fox. Just in case you want to root for an underdog, gray fox is an under fox. And the gray fox, how big about is the gray fox?

[Bill Lecom]

Oh, it's like a small dog weighs about anywhere from probably 8, 9 pounds on the slim side up to about 15 when you see them. See the small ones out in the field out there next to some of the bigger ones? There's a whale of a difference in there in size wise, but the gray fox tends to stay in the brush a lot. They're what I call bush dogs. And the red fox, on the other hand, is a field dog.

[Alie Ward]

Oh.

[Bill Lecom]

And so the gray fox has short, stubby legs, and the red fox has long legs for the field. I've seen that movement, you know, through grasses and things like that.

[Alie Ward]

Is that why people think of the red fox more when they think of a fox? Because we just aren't seeing these bush dogs?

[Bill Lecom]

That's exactly right. Exactly. Mm.

[Alie Ward]

I've only seen a gray fox, I think, once. They live on Catalina as well. Right. Just a quick side note. So Catalina is one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California. And I went to college in Santa Barbara. I lived there for months before I realized, like, oh, those are islands out in the ocean. Those are islands right there. And the only other fox, by the way, in the gray fox's genus, Eurocyon, is the little island fox. And it's tiny. It weighs in at just like 4 or 5 pounds. Archaeologists think it's only been on those islands for about 6,000 years. And the National Park Service notes that the indigenous Chumash revered those foxes as sacred and thought that they helped usher in dreams. And I personally would follow an island fox into the beyond. I couldn't help myself. Now, what about Bill?

[Bill Lecom]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Those are the small ones, the little ones. And there's still a debate on how they ever got there.

[Alie Ward]

I was wondering that because I had to take a ferry for, like, an hour and a half, so I don't know how they got on. That's a lot of swimming. Can they swim?

[Bill Lecom]

Well, some people say that the native people living on the mainland exported them out to the islands in their travels way before the white man ever got here.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Bill Lecom]

Some others say, no, it was when the two land masses, when the islands were part of the mainland and broke off millions of years ago, that it took them along with it.

[Alie Ward]

How did you get down the path of foxes or up the tree of foxes?

[Bill Lecom]

Whoa. You want to hear a story?

[Alie Ward]

Yes, of course. That's why I'm here.

[Bill Lecom]

Well, like around 2007 or so, my doctor said to me. He said, you know, Bill, if you would get out and walk for, let's say, a Half an hour to an hour every day. It'll help you a lot physically. So I took him up on that offer. And I had always been interested in birds. Okay. So as a fledgling birder, I got myself DSLR camera and I went out into Bixby park here near. In Palo Alto, and I started taking photos of birds. And I got to be fairly good. And one of my favorite, favorite ones was the bullock's oriole. Okay. It's a very. It's a pretty bird. And I knew a tree down this old dirt road where they were hanging out. So one morning I'm walking down that road and I come around a bend and whoa. Ahead of me up there is this fox sitting next to the road. And I knew it was a fox, but I had no idea what kind of a fox it was. I was zero, okay. When it comes to knowing anything about them. And this was in 2009. So I started taking photos, walking closer and closer and closer. And there was a steel gate across the road. And so that little fox was sitting right on the other side of that gate. So when I went around the corner of that gate, that little fox just stood up and casually, I mean casually walk back into the brush. I said, whoa.

[Alie Ward]

So Bill had this brush with the cat sized bush dogs.

[Bill Lecom]

And so the next day I come back taking a look to see if I could find a fox, you know, in the bushes or wherever. Yeah, Nothing really. The second day, nothing. The third day, I'm coming along that same road in that same area, and I'm looking back in the brush and everything, and what did I see? I saw three young foxes under the edge of the brush watching me come up the road.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, my God, how cute.

[Bill Lecom]

So I'm saying to myself, oh, I discovered a family. Not just one fox, there's a whole family here.

[Alie Ward]

Just a side note, this was in 2009, and at the time, Bill was nearly 70 years old. Let me math this out for you. Bill is 85 people. I didn't find out until after the interview. And I thought he was like maybe 60. He's 85 and he's still out doing fieldwork. So take his doctor's advice. Walk 30 minutes a day if you can. Maybe slide a post it note notepad in your pocket in case you see some frolicking animals. But yeah. So on this day in 2009, Bill saw this case, gaggle of foxes who kind of looked at him quizzically.

[Bill Lecom]

I sat down on the other side of the road and I had a post it Pad in my pocket, and I just started jotting down little things about what they were doing over there in that brush, you know, and they were curious about me. And, you know, what's this human doing over there on the other side of the road? You know, may have been what they were thinking. And then I came back day after day after day, and on one of those days, the adults were out, One of the adults was on up the road a ways, and I was between her and her little family back in the bush. Oh, and she comes up to the gate, and she gets down on her belly, and she's looking at me, and then she barks. I'd never heard a fox bark in all my life.

[Alie Ward]

Me neither.

[Bill Lecom]

And she barks several times. And that's the only time in all of the years that I've been doing this study that I was afraid of a fox.

[Alie Ward]

What did it sound like?

[Bill Lecom]

Like somebody with laryngitis. I can imitate a little bit, a little bit of it, but not with the velocity that they do it. I'll show you. Okay. It goes something like this. That's sort of the sound of a gray.

[Alie Ward]

Really? But raspier.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah. Yeah. More laryngitis.

[Alie Ward]

Wow. I didn't know that they did that.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

So the call of the gray fox is apparently like if a cocker spaniel smoked a pack a day of Marlboro reds and has never slept with a TV off. I picture a dog stumbling out of a casino and coughing while a gray fox is hiding in nearby shrubbery and looks up from a Sunday crossword because they thought someone called their name. But gray foxes can also sound kind of like a squeaky toy or a whistle. And according to one regional field guide in the Northeast, gray foxes communicate through this variety of vocalizations, including growls and barks and whines and whimpers and squeals and yips and yaps. And the babies are on the yip, yappier side, I guess, before their voices get develop their signature gravelly patina. I had no idea. Is that mostly just a gray fox, or is that kind of just. That is what the fox says.

[Bill Lecom]

The red foxes have a different tone to their bark, but it's very similar.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, I had no idea. I didn't even know that they did much vocalizing. So she's bark. She's on her belly barking at you?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, she's barking at me. And I'm worried she's gonna come charging over and bite my leg, and I want to find a stick or something like that to Defend myself, you. But there wasn't anything around. And so what happened was that she stood up and decided to run past me.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, bye. Bye.

[Bill Lecom]

And that's what she did. She just. Fast as you can believe, just a flash, boom. And she's into the brush with her kids. And as I observed these foxes over time, it just so happened that they began to not only take on their own personalities, but I began to see that they had an emotional life and a cognitive life, which I didn't know before.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. So Bill began to go out and watch him every day, jotting field notes on his post it pad in his pocket and taking pictures and video and working with local ecologists to gather data. And then one day, about four years.

[Bill Lecom]

Into it, this partner of mine, Greg, and I, had bought a couple of trail cameras, and I was going to check the SD cards and the trail cameras, but I had to go a long way around to get to where it was. Back in the woods, this little fox knew where I was going and beat me there. He met me there at the trail camera. And when I saw that, I thought that little fox anticipated where I was going. That means that they have some sense of future. Oh, okay. And they have some sense of being able to think. And that changed the whole picture of my relationship with the foxes.

[Alie Ward]

Just a side note, this ability is called extended consciousness. And in 2024, a group of biologists and philosophers, highly regarded, acknowledged, via something called the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, that first, there's a strong scientific support for attributions of conscious experience to other mammals and to birds. And second, the empirical evidence indicates at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates, including reptiles, amphibians, fish, and many invertebrates, including, at a minimum, they write, cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans, and insects. They also said that when there's a realistic possibility of conscious experience in an animal, it's irresponsible to ignore that possibility in decisions affecting the animal and that we should consider welfare risks of animals. So that little gray fox may have thought, I'm going to see what this ape in pants is up to. This sucker can't even climb a tree or eat a raw chipmunk. Sad. Wow. And so they anticipated that they met you there. Did you think they wanted to keep tabs on you as a threat? Or do you think it was curiosity and they just knew, oh, this guy's fine, but what's he doing back at his camera?

[Bill Lecom]

He always goes to it was the curiosity quotient. I sometimes called it is a high 10 way up there.

[Alie Ward]

Really?

[Bill Lecom]

Compared with other raccoons are about seven.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Bill Lecom]

On such a scale as that. But the curiosity level. And so when they got comfortable with me being around and sitting across the road taking those notes, I was no longer a threat. And they got that. They weren't afraid of me. I was one of the landscapes, so to speak. So that's where that little fox came in. He was comfortable with me already and anticipated where I was going.

[Alie Ward]

And how big of a social structure do they have? Do they live usually with solitary lives plus their family, or do they couple off, or do they live in kind of like a pack?

[Bill Lecom]

They are not a pack. Okay, first, they are a family unit.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Bill Lecom]

And they have mom and dad fox raise the young together, and they're in a monogamous pair. Monogamy to an extent.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, well, do tell.

[Bill Lecom]

The female is polyandrous.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, good for her.

[Bill Lecom]

And it's been suggested that they're polyandrous. That adds to their viability, survivability, and so forth, because they aren't just in one genetic line. A female fox, out of five pups that are born by her, two, three, maybe, Maybe from another male, not her mate.

[Alie Ward]

Do you think the mates know that? And they're just like, hey, man, it's part of a biodiversity. What are you gonna do?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, I think it's just the pattern of life that they live. It's like you and I live a pattern of life that we don't think too much about, you know, because it's just the way things are in our lives.

[Alie Ward]

So I snooped gander at the 2009 paper Multiple paternity and Kinship in the Gray Fox from the journal Mammalian Biology, which concluded that up to found 57% of all litters had more than one father, with the highest rates seen in the denser populations. And I'm sorry, how is that possible? Okay, you gotta get yourself a second uterus. Essentially, a female gray fox has a womb for each ovary and thus can kind of stagger litters or pause development on an embryo in one uterus while she weans the litter from the first tank. So one uterus is might have Ronald's babies and the other might have Craig's, and she has to grow them and nurse them. So it's her Choice, which in 2025 shouldn't seem evolved to us, but here we are. Do you feel like foxes were waiting for someone, particularly gray foxes, to come along and study them, but they had to make sure that you were cool first.

[Bill Lecom]

I'm not sure about that scenario. I bet I do know that shortly after I started this study, a friend of mine, Rick Landman, said to me, he said, bill, you've got to find a fox expert and run some of your ideas off on this fox expert. And I found Dr. Ben Sachs over at UC Davis. So when I went to meet with Ben and talk to him about what I was doing and everything like that, one of the things he said to me, he said, bill, he said, it's about time somebody began to study in depth that gray fox. Because everybody had been studying the red fox and all the rest of them, but not the gray fox. I got in on the ground floor.

[Alie Ward]

And so Bill went on to be the director of the independent Urban Gray Fox Research Project and then later a co founder of the Urban Wildlife Research Research Project. Did you ever tell your doctor that his prescription for walking ended up being very good for you and the gray fox?

[Bill Lecom]

He retired shortly thereafter and I lost track of him.

[Alie Ward]

The foxes are like, hey, thanks for that. We needed that. Someone's got to study us. What are foxes out there eating? Are they omnivorous? Are they generalists like coyotes? Or do they just go after mammals or bugs?

[Bill Lecom]

They're omnivorous. Oh, yeah. But one of the things they do in the process is that they feed on a lot of rodents. And it's by way of feeding on rodents that they are the, well, predators period, are the ones that balance out the ecosystem and create a healthy ecosystem. So the gray fox will eat anything.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, wow.

[Bill Lecom]

Except they don't like feathered small birds, although they will on occasion capture one and eat them. But mostly it's rodents, squirrels, that kind of thing.

[Alie Ward]

Are they lying in wait to ambush something? Are they climbing trees to get birds and squirrels? Like, what does it look like when a fox is hungry?

[Bill Lecom]

Let's see. Okay, here's a story. Okay, I was checking my trail cameras and I was going back, way back into the woods of this one area. Behind me, three foxes were following me.

[Alie Ward]

This man is the snow White of foxes and I love him.

[Bill Lecom]

So I just, I didn't pay much attention to them. I was leading the way over to my trail camera over there. And when I got to the trail camera, I noticed that one of the foxes was missing. And I had no idea where she had gone. And I was leaning over and I looked up, and there in the tree, about maybe 20ft away from me, up in the tree, there she was. And it was a young female that I called cute Cute is up in that tree and she is hunting. And what she had done is she spotted a squirrel up in that tree. She climbed the tree, and she gets to a location on a branch, and the squirrel is just down below her a little ways, and boom, she goes for it and she slips and she falls. Misses the squirrel and falls into a berry vine thicket.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, no.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, she fell right straight down. Anyway, that squirrel gets up on that branch where she was and is chittering away. You know how they do sometimes it was almost as if saying, well, God help me.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. It was just laughing at her.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Like that's what you get. Was Cute. Cute? Is that how she got her name?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah. The first time I saw her, she was coming up out of a tunnel trail. I looked at her and I said, that's the cutest little fox I've ever seen. And so I named her Cute. And her mate was the alpha male of the area, and he was. They didn't like being parents, let me put it that way.

[Alie Ward]

Really?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah. Yeah. Over on the other side, the pair foxes, Gray and Mama Bold. Those two were exquisite parents when it came to raising their young. But Cute and Dark, they didn't like being parents.

[Alie Ward]

Really? What did they do or what did they not do?

[Bill Lecom]

They tended to ignore their young ones. They'd do enough to feed them and so forth like that and get them up to the point where they could hunt for themselves. But a lot of times what would happen would be that Cute would want some attention from Dark, her mate, you know, and she'd go over and nuzzle him, and he would just walk away.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, what a dick.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah. I mean, it was like, what? Come on, guy.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. Alpha males, you know?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah. And it was like he was fixated on his own job. Well, certain times of the year, he would chase all of the males out of the region because he knew that Cute was going to have some pups. Oh. And so he didn't want to have any of the other males around, and he'd chase him to the other side of the creek. And that was far enough away.

[Alie Ward]

So gray foxes, they're pretty tiny. They're about the size of a house cat, but they do like their territories. And I've read that one square mile is enough for a family of gray foxes. But of course, in urban interfaces, that's not going to happen. And fox families are much more squeezed in. How long is our foxes gestating?

[Bill Lecom]

About 53 days. Oh. And in nine months, they're ready to have their own family.

[Alie Ward]

That's so quick, so pregnant. Less than two months. And in less than a year, your baby's ready to have babies of its own to feed rats to.

[Bill Lecom]

I know. I've watched from little balls of gray fur all the way to ready to disperse. I've watched that whole process go. Wow.

[Alie Ward]

How many in a litter typically?

[Bill Lecom]

Usually it was about three, but mama bold, she always had four or five. And one of the other things, too, is that she kept nursing her pups longer than most female gray foxes do. And so they were pretty hefty when they get under there. She only had six nipples, you know, and the number of little foxes under their nursing, Sometimes one of them would have to wait out.

[Alie Ward]

Like you're trying to get brunch on a Sunday. Just on the waiting list. We'll call you when there's a nipple ready.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Well, with having a few pups or kits, I always thought they were called kits, but you can call them pups.

[Bill Lecom]

Well, they're canines.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, that makes sense. Why do we hear fox kits all the time?

[Bill Lecom]

We've just messed it up.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Bill Lecom]

So when I hear kit, I think of kitten.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Bill Lecom]

You know, cats.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Linguists assert that a baby fox can be called a cub, a kit, or a pup. All are correct. But Bill is the fox guy. His license plate says fox, Fox guy. So I'm never calling them kits again. If they are able to reproduce at nine months and they have a few pups, is their population doing okay? Or are they able to reproduce quickly? Or are gray foxes, you know, partly because of human development, are they really in decline?

[Bill Lecom]

They're doing okay.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Bill Lecom]

There are a few places where there has been recorded decline in the number of gray foxes, but nobody really has an answer as to why one of the areas is in the city of Chicago. It may be because of the number of coyotes that are in Chicago. It's speculation.

[Alie Ward]

I understand that up in Palo Alto, the Meta campus is so large and lush that they have gray foxes just hanging out under the windows. Is that true?

[Bill Lecom]

I was the first guy to be called in to take a look at the gray foxes at Facebook.

[Alie Ward]

Really? How did someone find you? I mean, you are the fox guy.

[Bill Lecom]

But what happened there was that they were getting quite a few gray foxes on the campus. And this was the old campus. They've since built a brand new campus. And I'll get there in a minute. They wanted me to come over and assess what to do with these because some of the employees were afraid of the foxes, and some of the people fed the foxes, and they didn't. They had no guidelines as to what to do. And so I went over there and I took a look at the situation, and I discovered that they had pups underneath a ramp on the campus. And I turned to the people that were there and I said, you're. You're not going to be able to move these foxes off campus. The best thing we can do is instead of trying to get rid of them, let's make them an asset. And Mark Zuckerberg said, oh, my God, that's what we should do.

[Alie Ward]

Really?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Fox Book.

[Bill Lecom]

It became that people were filming the foxes as they were coming through the campus and moving around and. And sleeping on their cars and all kinds of stuff was going on, and people got comfortable with them.

[Alie Ward]

So this first Facebook Fox Campus News story broke in the spring of 2013, but about five years later.

[Bill Lecom]

And then they built the new campus over across the highway. And that's a big, big, big complex in there. So the gardener discovered that up on the roof of the building, there were gray foxes up there.

[Alie Ward]

What? How? I guess they can climb trees, but.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, but you don't climb a building.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. Was there anything up there? Was there just like an H vac system or had they landscaped the roof?

[Bill Lecom]

Again, I go over to Facebook, you know, and I'm assessing the situation and so forth, and that question came up, well, how did they get up here? You know, and they had pups up there, too.

[Alie Ward]

What?

[Bill Lecom]

Babies. Anyway, one of the guys that was with us on this tour on the roof, he said, you know, he said, when we were building this section, we had gigantic ladders that were set up on the side of the buildings. And they may have climbed up the ladder.

[Alie Ward]

No.

[Bill Lecom]

And I said, that's probably it. Because I said, I have seen firsthand foxes climbing ladders.

[Alie Ward]

What? When did you see it?

[Bill Lecom]

I saw it one time when there was a ladder up against a dumpster.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, my God.

[Bill Lecom]

And the old fox just went right, right up the ladder just like it was second nature.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. As one would. Well, were they stuck on the roof?

[Bill Lecom]

Oh, no, no.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Bill Lecom]

Because in part of the construction and everything, they had to have fire escapes. The fire escapes are the way down and nowadays the way up.

[Alie Ward]

So not only were foxes living on this new eco friendly landscaped roof, but they also had pups up there. Fully rooftop terrace Menlo park real estate. Are they usually in dens? I always thought that foxes burrowed and lived in a cozy little hole that had, like a little comforter and a bed and a Chimney pipe and all that stuff. But are they living under brush or do different foxes, like, does a red fox live in a totally different type of housing situation?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, the red fox is the one that digs a burrow.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Bill Lecom]

Digs down in and makes rooms underground and everything like that for the family. Gray foxes don't. Gray foxes will find dense, dense thickets, areas that are really impossible for most to get into. That's where they have their. Their dens.

[Alie Ward]

Oh.

[Bill Lecom]

And sometimes, like when I first came upon Mama Bold and Gray, at first they had a den that was back under a huge number of trees that were down on the ground that had come down, there were eucalyptus trees, and they built this den underneath there. And one of the guys that worked at the water treatment plant, he had been kind of eyeballing the foxes for about 20 years. He told me, he said that den has been used for at least 25 years.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, wow. So Bill spent years observing this one fox mother he called Mama Bold, who was born in that inherited multi generational den nestled under a fallen tree.

[Bill Lecom]

The story behind Mama Bold is really quite an interesting one.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. What's her deal?

[Bill Lecom]

When she was a pup, she was born in that natal den that I just mentioned under that pile of trees. And when she was really small, her dad, the gray fox I called Squat, he had overcome any skittishness about me. And he would come out to the edge of the road and I'd be across the road and I'd chatter at him, you know, and one time he looked behind himself into the bushes, and I knew right away. I said to myself, there's another fox in that back there in the brush. And after a while, this little pup comes out on the road and gives Squat her father a what I call a fox kiss. And the fox kiss is a greeting that they give the pups give to their adults. And it's a touching of the nose or on the cheek sometimes, but it's a little kiss. It's a little recognition that, hey, you're cool.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, just a side note, gray foxes have white markings on their chin and black around their eyes, but it's not all fashion because they also have scent glands on their face, and they have scent glands on all four feet, and they have scent glands in their butt. And no, you can't have them removed. If you wanted a pet fox, you simply would live in a stinky house which was also scented with pee. It's a bold smell indeed. But back to the baby foxes. So the one Bill called Mama Bold was A little two month old pup who started very skittish. And then she grew into this big, confident personality, eventually becoming that doting mother with the big litters of chubby, strong foxes that we talked about earlier. Very busy nipples. But when she was younger, and after.

[Bill Lecom]

A while, she would sit in the middle of the road and I could do most anything, and she wouldn't go, she wouldn't zoom out, you know, so that was the start of mama bowl. But when it came time for her to disperse, she tried, but there wasn't anywhere to go. That's one of the downsides of the Palo Alto baylands. There's patches of habitat, but there's nothing really good and connected and so forth.

[Alie Ward]

Well, Palo Alto real estate is really tough.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, it is. So what happens is that one morning I'm walking on one of the trails and bold is behind me and there's a chain link fence. On the other side of that fence comes Squat.

[Alie Ward]

Enter squat, a short little fox dude, and mama Bold's dad.

[Bill Lecom]

And he's coming in a determined sort of way. She knew what was coming. She ran. And I thought, oh, my God. But I didn't quit. I. For some reason, I ran after them. And down on the road is squat and bold facing off with one another. And she's got her mouth wide open and she's ready to rip into her father.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, wow.

[Bill Lecom]

And this brief, really brief, two, three second fight begins. And it stops, it freezes. And everything seemed to be freezing right there on the spot.

[Alie Ward]

Who was watching the fight? Another male fox. And when mama bold saw him, she ran off with him. So take that, dad. I'm in love.

[Bill Lecom]

I turned back to look to see where squatt was. I never saw him again. He vanished.

[Alie Ward]

Really?

[Bill Lecom]

And she took over his territory.

[Alie Ward]

And that was her father.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Drama.

[Bill Lecom]

Squatt's daughter took over all of the territory that he once had as her own.

[Alie Ward]

That's like succession or something. That's like an HBO drama. That's like game of thrones kind of stuff. Those dynamics are so intense, you know, which is must be such a joy to watch. And I know I wanted to ask just like two questions from listeners. So many questions were about red foxes. And folks, this is exciting because now we get to have a second fox episode called vulpinology. But in a second, we're gonna answer more than two questions submitted by patrons at patreon.com ologies you can join for as little as a dollar a month. But first, let's donate to a cause. And of Course, it'll be going to the Urban Wildlife Research Project, which is dedicated to protecting the gray fox and other urban wildlife in the San Francisco Bay area. And they do groundbreaking research, advocacy and public education. They document wildlife behavior to safeguard the biodiverse habitats that they rely on too. And their mission is not just about conservation, they say, it's about. About fostering a world where people and wildlife can thrive together. And right now, the Urban Wildlife Research Project is taking on a really exciting project, looking to fund the removal of concrete from a place called Matador Creek, which also has beavers. Side note. And they wanna open up those waterways so wildlife from the Palo Alto Baylands areas can move up into the Santa Cruz Mountains and thereby interface with a healthy genetic pool. Bill told me so. To support their work and also to get Bill's excellent newsletter, which I love, love, go to urbanwildliferesearchproject.org, which we're going to link in the show notes. And thank you to sponsors of ologies for making these donations possible. You know when you have leftover food or you have vegetable choppings and you're like, what do I do with them? I'm not sure if you know this, but when it hits the landfill, food waste turns into methane, which is a potent, potent greenhouse gas. It's not great in there, but there is good news. There's this thing called a mill food recycler and I love ours. It makes keeping food out of the garbage as easy as just dropping it in. It's so cool. It's kind of like the size of a small laundry hamper. When we have scraps or when we have leftover food, we toss it in there and it magically overnight dehydrates it, grounds it up. It doesn't smell bad. I was blown away. Mill handles almost anything. You can keep just filling it for weeks. And then what you get out of it? Something that looks kind of like nutrient rich coffee grounds. You can put them in your garden, you can add them to your compost. Milk can even get them to a farm for you. And I feel so much better than just putting it into the garbage or keeping it on my counter for three days because I forgot to unload it into the compost. So if your eyebrows are up and you're intrigued again, I love ours. Go to mill.comOlogies for $75 off your order mail.comOlogies love it. You know me, you know I love Squarespace. I've been using Squarespace since before Ologies launched. Here's the deal. I needed a website. I put it off for three years. I heard an ad about Squarespace on another podcast in one night. I put up my own website and then I was able to launch Ologies with it. You need a website. You need Squarespace straight up. They have amazing cutting edge design tools. Anyone can build a bespoke online presence that totally fits your brand or business. They make it so easy. Easy. They have these really intuitive tools they have built in analytics. So if you're a data dork, you can get into the numbers with website traffic. You can track money you're making from bookings or invoices or product sales all in one place with Squarespace to get paid. 12 out of 10, no regrets. Anyone who needs a website, either for their personal brand or if they're launching a business or if they're selling classes, I'm like, squarespace, use my code, save some money, head to squarespace.com Ollie Ologies for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code ologies to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Do it. Make a website. You will not regret it. I'm with you, holding your hand in spirit, not creepy. Have you ever thought about Personal Style and how there's like an art and a science behind it? There's neuroscience behind that. We don't have time to get into that. But having some confidence really changes the decisions that you make day to day. If you're like, person, personal style, I don't know where to begin with that. Perhaps Daily look can help you out there. They are a styling service. They use data, science and your own personal stylist to help you find your perfect balance between style and comfort. If you're like, what's Daily Look? Daily look is the number one highest rated premium personal styling service for women. You can get started, you take a style quiz, and then from there, your personal stylist takes the time to kind of understand what your preferences are and creates a box of timeless and really vertical versatile pieces just for you. How many things are in there? There's up to 12 premium pieces per box. And you get to keep what you love. You return the rest. My first Daily look box, I was like, everything in here so fits my vibe. A lot of black, a lot of angular things, and there were really lovely brands, pieces that I can hang on to for a while and I love that I can try it on at home. Anyway, elevate your style by signing [e-mail] today. Take your style quiz@daily look look.com and get 50 off your first styling fee with code Ologies. Daily Look. You're looking good. So am I. This is an advertisement from BetterHelp. Listen. On ologies, I talk about mental health a lot. I talk about my own. We go into the science of it and around here we're pretty pro therapy. But in other circles there's still a fear of judgment or a fear of stigma. And when people hesitate to get help, that doesn't just affect them and how they feel, it impacts, impacts families and workplaces and relationships and entire communities. So I try to encourage people, if they are struggling with something, to seek therapy. It's helped me so much. I've used BetterHelp and it got me through some really tough times as my dad was in hospice. They match people with the right therapist from their big network of credentialed therapists who have all these different specialties. And if for any reason you're not vibing, you can switch therapists. No charge, no extra drama. BetterHelp has been at this for over 10 years. 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Like they're so cute and they're so expressive with their pretty eyes and their eyelashes and I just don't understand why they're seen as like, sneaky and stuff. Sly.

[Bill Lecom]

They're smart.

[Alie Ward]

Aha.

[Bill Lecom]

Slyness. And all of that attributed to foxes goes all the way back to Aesop. Oh, Aesop's Fables. And if you read any of Aesop's Fables, there it's always sly, cunning fox. They're teaching stories is what they are. He dubbed them that and but we've never changed it. It's just the pattern of belief has come down for over 2000 years.

[Alie Ward]

I want to fact check this and hold up. Aesop's fables are over 2000 years old. I thought that had to be a misspeak, but no, it's right on the money news to me. Aesop lived around 600 BCE as an enslaved person in Greece, and his Wikipedia notes that he was a gifted storyteller, but quote, strikingly ugly. Which seems an unnecessary detail. But to people who have dated comedians, it may be relevant. And a 2021 paper titled Aesop's Analysis of Major Characters notes that the fox appears the most frequently of all the animals in his fables. And although usually representing cunning, deceit, or treachery, the fox also occasionally serves as a more general figure, like a basic representative of humanity. But yeah, usually in these stories the fox is too clever for its own good and it's a victim of hubris and folly. There must be depictions that Bill loves, though. There's so many to choose from. Well, speaking of pop culture, Mel from New Zealand wants to know, hi, it's Mel here from New Zealand. I'm curious, how close are foxes and what they do and how they live to the movie? Fantastic, Mr. Fox. Thanks.

[Bill Lecom]

I've never watched that movie.

[Alie Ward]

Really?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Is there a movie that is good about foxes that you say they got it right? A little?

[Bill Lecom]

No no.

[Alie Ward]

Fox and the Hound, Robin Hood.

[Bill Lecom]

I haven't paid any attention to those stories.

[Alie Ward]

I respect that. Now some of you had fur questions such as Connie DeFazio, Lynette Davila, Kyla C. First time question asker, Rosamunda Jada Lynn, and in the tangle systems, words, are they soft? Do they like Pettence? Can I smush my face in their fur and hug them and give them food and play with them? The tangle system, no. But with enough data we can at least imagine the experience. Do you ever get to observe them very, very closely? Some people wanted to know about their hair. If it's very coarse, if it's very fuzzy, if it's the guard hairs over and the soft underneath. Are foxes as fuzzy and cute as they look?

[Bill Lecom]

Short answer? Yes.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah. First of all, even though they tolerate me within their environment, they have their limits. And their limits are about 5, 6, 7ft, the closest they'll come. After that, it's really nervous, skittish time. So I have never had the urge and I've never petted one. They don't come that close.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah. And if you're wondering how soft are these critters, keep in mind that the gray fox is also called the maned fox because of its bristly ridge of hairs along the top of its tail. Once again, dogs, cats, excellent pets. There's less pee, they have softer fur. They are available at a shelter near you for not a lot of money. But of course in a dream sequence, if you got to pet the belly of a tiny gray fox, well, their fur is soft.

[Bill Lecom]

I have a mounted fox that I take out when I give public lectures and presentations on it. It's a little mounted fox named Rusty and he's really cool. Kids love him.

[Alie Ward]

Do you know Rusty's backstory?

[Bill Lecom]

The way he came about was that San Jose State University in their science department, they had a gray fox, a mounted gray fox in their study. So when I started going out to give presentations, I would borrow this gray fox from San Jose State. And it was an ugly looking gray fox. It wasn't mounted very well and it wasn't, it was so old that it had lost a lot of its color. So I got online and I decided I'm going to find a gray fox that really is representative of what I'm seeing out in the field. And I contacted a guy over in Massachusetts and he had some online for sale mounted gray foxes. And I looked at them all and I, I didn't, I wasn't attracted to any of them. But he had his phone number up there too. So I gave him a call and I said, hey, do you have any other mounted foxes? And he said, I do. Well, he put Rusty up there and I bingo. That was it. That was all there is to it. That was the fox that I needed. I bought it, gave it to San Jose State, and they held onto it for some about five years. But then they shut down the department that this was housed in. And the curator contacted me and she said, you better get over here right away because they're taking all of the materials that we have here. She said, I don't know what they're going to do with it, but Rusty is part of that. I went booming down there to State and picked up Rusty and I have him now here.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, I can't imagine him being in better hands, obviously.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, he's cool.

[Alie Ward]

And just a side note, don't cry because usually taxidermists who deal with museums are using specimens that were killed naturally and then found and donated, or they were ambassador species that were then donated. And for more on this and why I had a dead quail in my freezer for like over a year, please see the Nasology episode with expert and award winning taxidermist Alice Markham, which is linked in the show notes. So it's not all dark. Speaking of darkness, a few people wanted to know. Amanda Vegan and Sarah wanted to know if they are nocturnal. Sarah asked, if a fox is out during the day, is that bad? Does it mean it has rabies or mange? And is that true across a lot of foxes or does it really depend on the species?

[Bill Lecom]

They are not strictly nocturnal.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Bill Lecom]

Foxes, when they sleep, they don't sleep like you and I do.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, really?

[Bill Lecom]

There's another characteristic, like cat. Like, they nap, they'll nap for about maybe 20, 30 minutes and then they wake up and they go to another location where they have another sleeping bed.

[Alie Ward]

Really?

[Bill Lecom]

And they can do this numerous times during the course of the day. So you might see a gray fox in the middle of the day going from one sleeping location to another location.

[Alie Ward]

They've evolved to just function sleeping in these kind of naps.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alie Ward]

I mean, I wish my brain did that. I would get a lot more done. Bill also sent me an email after we chatted, regretting that he didn't define crepuscular. But I got you, Bill. Bill wrote, crepuscular means that an animal like the gray fox has daytime hours on each end of the day. They are up and about, hunting and going about fox things a couple hours after sunrise and a few hours before nightfall. And he also added that another story I missed was when the male gray fox brownie and his mate Little One got a divorce. That was kind of sad the way she handled it, he wrote. And that breaks me. Speaking of sadness and worry, some of you, Aliya Meyers, Lisa Gorman, Ali is tired. Andy Pepper, Clara Noongasser, Chris Curious, Alicia Harris, Lauren Robinson, her ladyship Jen and first time question askers Lydia Traum and Tim Barth wanted to know a lot of people were worried about conservation. And Courtney Peterson, they live in Utah and wanted to know how can I save the foxes? Or better ask, how can I help conserve them? I live in a rural area that's becoming quickly developed and a lot of people around here don't like the foxes because they kill their chickens and everything.

[Bill Lecom]

But how could I help conserve the foxes in my area?

[Alie Ward]

Thank you. And Bria says it's kind of a bummer to think about what might happen. Two foxes. And so yeah, where are we at and what can we do?

[Bill Lecom]

Well, first of all, we got to overcome the notion that they're chicken killers. We're living at a time when we are interfacing with more and more wildlife out there. And in so doing, one of the things we have to learn to do is if we have a chicken coop, we keep the chickens completely isolated from the outside world. By that I mean you have a chicken pen, but you also put a top on the chicken pen.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, got it.

[Bill Lecom]

A roof so to speak. And it can just be wire up in there. But any way that they can get into the chicken pen they will.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Bill Lecom]

So you have to isolate your chickens off to the side and make sure that they are inaccessible.

[Alie Ward]

I know you want chicken tips. And luckily we have a two part episode on chickens with expert and author of the book under the Henfluence, Tova K. Danovich. Peck it at the link in the show notes. But yeah, as we also discussed in the indigenous fire ecology episode with Dr. Amy Christensen, the wihoo or wildlife human interface is getting pretty razor thin. And the more humans move into the forest and the wilds, the more of a bummer it can be for the critters. So you have to be careful when you invade wildlife territory and you got to keep your side of the street clean and don't complain about foxes acting.

[Bill Lecom]

Like foxes and then we can live side by side. So with development coming in. I don't like that word, development. When I think of development, I think of uplifting Kinds of things. But this kind of development destroys and it destroys habitat. So with more and more of that coming in and more and more the foxes showing up in your backyard at night usually is a good thing. Because what they're doing. We'll go back to what they're doing is they're keeping the rodent population in check. And so you're not going to have a rat problem. You're going to have a good, balanced ecosystem. And as long as we can keep that going, we're okay around here. I have had 1, 2, 3. I've had 4 cases over the course of the time that I've been monitoring these foxes to where whole neighborhoods were, quote, invaded by gray foxes. I'm really rather envious. And most of the people who lived in those subdivisions and those places, usually right along a creek, by the way. Oh, people just got so used to them that they. They do photo ops with them. I mean, you know, taking pictures and putting on next door and so forth like that. And a lot of people get ahold of me, and they want to know what to do, you know, when they have, let's say, family of foxes under their deck. This one man, he contacted me and he said, I have a little dog, okay? And this family of foxes has moved in under my deck, and I don't want them there. What do I do? My first impulse was to say, leave him alone.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Bill Lecom]

And so in the end, I told him how to block off the deck so that they couldn't connect. Get back in under there. And he was successful. They hung around for about three or four days. He said they were just crying. No, he said, then. Then they left. They disappeared.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, poor sweeties. Do they ever eat cats or little dogs?

[Bill Lecom]

I've never heard of any. No, I've never heard of any doing that. Coyotes. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alie Ward]

And just a side note, gray foxes are more capable of meal planning than I am, and I have thumbs. But they cache their food, hiding carcasses among piles of leaf litter or buried in loose soil, and they go back and eat it later. And kind of like your co worker marking leftover pad thai with a sharpie, Foxes poop on top of their cache site to say, don't dare, but no poop. Fair game. Now, on the subject of microbes, et cetera, let's talk about a bummer disease in wild populations. Bill opened up about a very difficult aspect of being the fox guy.

[Bill Lecom]

But canine distemper is a major, major problem in this area that I'm monitoring. By 2016. I had 25 foxes that I was monitoring. And that tells you something right there. There wasn't enough room for them to spread out like they should have. So they were crowded like neighbors, side by side, having their pups and so forth.

[Alie Ward]

And this was in 2016, a very dark time for Bill and his foxes.

[Bill Lecom]

So in November, I noticed some of the foxes missing, and Mama Bold was one of those. And at that time, I didn't know what the overt signs of canine distemper were, but one of them is a pus, like oozing from the eyes. And when you see that, you know they've got canine distemper. Well, so in November, December of 2016, all 25 foxes were wiped out. No. Yeah, they were hit by canine distemper. And we had the necropsied at UC Davis, at the vet lab there. And the lead state veterinarian told us that they had analyzed the two foxes. I said, well, where did it come from? You know? And she said, you know, in the state of California here. She said, I get die outs from all over the state every year, and it's canine distemper, and we don't know where it comes from. She said, it's like it lives in the earth itself. So with that die out, then I lost all of my foxes and I waited. I waited two years and one month with cameras on for that whole period of time waiting, waiting, waiting for the gray fox to show up and who shows up? Limos and big eyes. Oh, the last two gray foxes that I monitored out there at the Baylands before they died of canine this time.

[Alie Ward]

No.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, she died in February of last year, and he died November, the year.

[Alie Ward]

Before his last two foxes. This was gutting, and I was trying to control my face from just crumbling on the video call. Is there anything that can be done to prevent it? Does it mean if there was kind of a pandemic in that area, that more foxes will catch it from environmental causes?

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, yeah, it's still out there and it's still a danger to them all. And there's nothing that is effective. There's been attempts to make an edible that has a vaccine, a drug. Yeah, yeah, in it that would kill off canine distemper, but that hasn't worked too well.

[Alie Ward]

What do they do for dogs? Well, there's no treatment, just prevention by way of vaccination. So vaccinate your dogs. Research has shown that dogs can carry and spread distemper to wildlife, and wildlife are difficult, if not impossible. To vaccinate. So what else can you do for these foxes or not do.

[Bill Lecom]

Do not put that rat poison out there. Put an owl out there instead.

[Alie Ward]

Mm.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah, that's what we need to do. And I've been trying to push one of the complexes, one of the high tech complexes that's right on the border of the area that I'm monitoring. I've been trying to get them to get rid of those boxes and put in owl boxes instead.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah, we have gophers and we put up a barn owl box. And we were so sad that it's been unoccupied. And then we realized it was unoccupied because we have a pair of owls that moved in of great horned owls, which don't necessarily like to play well with barn owls, but that's great. We hear the owls hooting every night and we have fewer gophers than we did in the past, so. And we've had to ask all our neighbors, like, please don't put out any strychnine or any rat poison because these beautiful horned owls are like, you know, they're such a treat to have in the neighborhood and they are helping so much. Just a side note, a barn owl or a great horned owl can eat thousands of mice a year, sometimes up to two hefty rats a night. Just in case you don't have local foxes and you want to outsource your rodent control to like a hitman with a beak and a family. But back to foxes. I gather that these losses, whole multi generational gray fox community wiped out suddenly is just beyond the worst part of his work. What do you think is your favorite thing about studying animals in the wild and your favorite thing about maybe gray foxes?

[Bill Lecom]

Overall, I've always said this. Okay, I'm not doing really anything of very much importance. I have always said that the gray foxes and I can expand it out into a lot of other wildlife. Are my professors. And I'm a grad student in their course and I'm being taught by them what they are all about. And all I'm doing is just documenting, putting down notes, moving it over into my log. And that log now is well over 2 million words.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, my gosh. How do you keep track of that? Do you write it in a Google Doc or do you have it in notepads or.

[Bill Lecom]

Well, I first have. I have a notepad like this and this is what I take my notes on when I'm out in the field. I take it here. And then when I come back here to the computer. I have an ongoing daily log and I put it in a narrative form into the. And the log tells a story, a long, long story of daily documenting the behavior that I saw out there in the field.

[Alie Ward]

There's even a short documentary about our new favorite fox guy, and it's called the Foxes my professors. And we'll link it in the show notes because it's beautiful and Bill's great and you and the foxes deserve to see it. This has been so amazing. I'm so glad I finally got to talk to you. You've been on my list of people to talk to for literally years.

[Bill Lecom]

How. How come? I mean, what. What initiated that? I always want to know this kind.

[Alie Ward]

Of thing, I think looking for fox experts, looking for people who mention other people, other, you know, animal behaviorists. So you just end up hearing little chatter. And then when someone has the fox guy as their middle name, you can't not talk to that guy. You gotta talk to the fox guy.

[Bill Lecom]

Well, if you ever come up this way, just get in touch with me and we'll go out and I'll show you the landscape.

[Alie Ward]

I would love that. I need to make a trip up there.

[Bill Lecom]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, so ask fox people facts because honestly, their favorite topic is my favorite topic. I think you will find the same. And in the future we will do a vulpinology episode. But dang, these little gray ones, they have my hearts. It's going to be hard to top. Now in the show notes, we've linked Bill's fantastic fox book, the Road to Fox Hollow. And we've also linked the nonprofit urban wildlife research project. I highly recommend signing up for Bill's newsletter if you like beautiful prose and ecology and pictures of egregiously cute foxes. Now we are at Ologies on Bluesky and Instagram. I'm A.L.I.E. ward with one L on both. You can sign up for our [e-mail] Ologies or Ologies merch [e-mail] we also have shorter kid friendly episodes that are G rated. Those are called smallogies and available at the link in the show notes or wherever you get podcasts. Erin Talbert admits theologies podcast Facebook group Avileen Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyer does the website. Noelle Dilworth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale managing directs a whole shebang. And our amazing editors are Jake Chaffee and Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn mean the theme music. And if you stick around until the very episode I tell you you a secret this week is that Jarrett your podmother, my spouse has had me as simply the fox emoji in his phone for years and it is a vulpis fox. And now I'm like, well okay, but I'll take it. Also, I want to leave you this week with Bill's email signature which reads have a good day, keep moving on. Keep doing our best. Bill. Freaking love this guy. Okay, bye bye. Pachydermatology Homeology Cryptozoology Litology Nanotechnology Meteorology Olfactology Mapology Serology Selenology.

[Bill Lecom]

Hey, you're cool.

[Alie Ward]

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[Bill Lecom]

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