Cross Fox Last Night

Here's a fox with an interesting pelage! I would call her a cross fox, but she's almost a brindle, and she has a touch of mange as well -- a reminder that mange, distemper, and vehicle impact hunt fox in a way that is far more cruel than that of the dog man.  Decent food for a few months, and/or a few doses of ivermectin over two weeks, would set this fox right, but Mother Nature abhors populations running at the red-line for over-production, and so the numbers will just get hammered down somewhere else, one way or another. Mother Nature always bats last, and she is a cruel clean-up batter.

Note that this is not the same fox as was photographed a few nights ago.  Fox densities in the suburbs and cities are so high that territories overlap in a confusion of boundaries. It's rare for any fox to make it past their third or fourth year, and most are dead within 18 months due to disease alone -- a factor that has to occur in a mammal that is raising 4-5 young every year.  Steady-state population dynamics requires species with high-fecundity to have high rates of mortality.