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Show "Our dog alerted us to the fact that something was going on outside," Palen said. "As we got outside, we saw something disappearing through the fence at the back of the property." They counted seven ducks, which meant one was missing. "I said, 'If it's carrying a duck, it can't have gotten too far,' " Palen recalls telling her husband before she ran after the fox. "John was looking after me like, 'That's ridiculous — you're never going to get it back.' But Palen soon realized that magpies were chasing the fox, and "dive-bombing" it as it ran through the brush. As she considered ' the merits of following the animal into the thorny bushes, the magpies shifted a little to the east indicating that it had left the brush and gone under a fence. She hurried along an irrigation ditch and confronted the thief. "I ran around a big pile of dirt, and it was definitely a fox," she said. "It whipped around with the duck in its mouth, looked at me, and dropped the duck." The fox ran away, and Palen picked up the duck — which was still alive — and headed back to the farm. Armstrong was surprised that she had recovered the duck, and even more surprised when he heard how she did it. "I said, 'Well, the magpies told me where it was,' " and he looked at me like I was insane," she remembers. Palen did what she could to help the duck. "She had two wounds about the size of a dime on her shoulders, where the skin was torn and you could see muscle through it, and one wound on her chest that was a little smaller and more like a puncture wound and less like a tear," Palen said. The website, at www.wildawareutah.org/, includes tips for making property unattractive to unwanted wildlife, such as not leaving pet food outside, installing motion lights and turning sprinklers on to scare unwanted animals away. "The solution to this situation is for owners of ' chickens to make a better chicken coop," Douglass said. Some people put their chickens in a safe enclosure at night, he said, and others make their fencing more secure by cementing it below ground to make it difficult for foxes to break through. "They will dig, but they will only dig until they get discouraged," he said. Dquglass says he doesn't have any data to confirm or deny a growing fox population in the area, but they may be expanding their range and finding new territory. "As long as there are chickens and foxes, there will be foxes getting into chicken coops," he said. "Foxes are predators, and see them as an easy food source." And as long as foxes steal chickens and ducks, magpies may be nearby. "There is no honor among thieves," Douglass said, explaining that the birds were probably trying to steal the duck from the fox. "You see that often among predators.... it's competition for an easy meal." Palen said she was furious with that fox, and will try to stop it from stealing more of her fowl, but she doesn't blame it for following its instincts. "Everybody thinks chicken is tasty," she said. "We"re not the only ones." Contact reporter Becky Wright at 801-625-4274 or bwright@standard.net. Follow her on Twitter at @Re- porterBWright. The next morning, she optimistically posted that "Lucky the ducky" was holding her own and may recover. "We have not yet caught the fox," she added. "But I bet it's pretty hungry... good." On Sunday, she posted a photo of Lucky the Ducky swimming in a tub of water. The following day she wrote "Lucky continues to perk up, spending a little more time in the splash tub each day.... The wound on her chest is closing nicely, but the ones on her shoulders will take longer." Unfortunately, the duck's luck ran out, and it died a little while later. I Over the past few weeks, Palen and Armstrong have lost almost half of their flock to the fox. They put out a trap after the last incident, but haven't seen the fox since. According to Phil Douglass, conservation outreach manager for northern Utah for the Division of Wildlife Resources, . Palen and Armstrong will have to be more lucky than their duck to catch a fox. |
