Dolly usually nursed Frances outside, standing up. All the mama foxes we’ve been lucky enough to watch do this once their offspring are big enough and old enough to be out running around. So this video clip seems quite special to us: Dolly followed Frances into the den and they had a little nursing party inside.
We’ve said before that Dolly is a very no-nonsense fox. We’ve rarely seen her playing or fooling around. But in this instance, in the privacy of her den*, she gave in to the urge to be overjoyed, and her love of Frances and happiness at being with her was obvious – her tail was swishing, her ears were flat, she rolled onto her back… This was a very, very happy mama fox.
We watched this fox family – Dolly, Broken Ear, and Frances – on our livestream during the summer of 2023 and completely fell in love with them. We have hours and hours of video clips, and we’re obviously a bit behind in our publishing. We’ll keep going until all the best clips are online. And then we’ll get to work on this year’s magic tree den and tree stump den families. We have lots of publishing to do.
We’ve published 8 other episodes in the story of Dolly, Broken Ear, and Frances, and they’re all available here on our YouTube channel, in their own playlist, and also on our website: https://texasbackyardwildlife.com/
* If Dolly had known that we had cameras inside the den we suspect that she would have been mortified. Fortunately, our critters have no idea that we’re constantly spying on them.
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