Wandering around a semi-outdoor antique-and-battered-junk sale at the Berryville, VA fair grounds and came across Red Fox and a Gray Fox taxidermies in widely separated stalls, but mounted in the same pose and probably on the same commercial form. Spanned both, of course.
The Red Fox and the Gray Fox are *not* closely related; a case of parallel evolution.
Red Fox are mostly found in farm (especially corn) country, while Gray Fox are mostly found in rocky mountain country. My immediate area has plenty of both kinds of habitat.
Gray Fox, unlike your typical Red Fox, will climb a tree as fast as a cat.
Gray Fox are in their own genus, and are the only living root-stock of every other dog on earth.
From “The Velvet Claw; A Natural History of the Carnivores by David Macdonald”:
“The oldest surviving dog is the grey fox, evolving some 6 - 9 million years ago. Territorial pairs move nimbly through deciduous woodland and fields with dainty steps, searching for insects, fruits, carrion and small mammals up to the size of rabbits. Being able to rotate it’s forelegs, it is a relatively good tree climber.”
The Gray Fox (also spelled Grey Fox) is the only canid that ranges over much of North America and as far south as northern South America. I have seen them running through the ruins in Tikal in Guatemala, and at the edges of a dump in Oaxaca, Mexico.
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