November 13th 2009- Present

Oh gosh it is hard to think that Harry and Elspeth have been part of my family for one whole year. . .and three days as I had no time to post anything on the 13th (forgive me?).


Everyday I learn something new about them; for example I did not know until yesterday that Elspeth could jump over a four foot barrier in a single pounce and then proceed to dismantle said barrier until she managed to get to the chair that the barrier was protecting! How bout that?! That is one hell of a skill to manage to hide.

I also learnt recently that Harry who always tries to steel a sip of my coffee is quite happy to have his very own coffee cup but filled with water as long as he THINKS it is mine and I do not want him to have it.

A few months ago I moved Harry and Elspeth into their very own bedroom. I decided loosing my duvet to a cheeky fox every night just would not do so now they have their own room with their own sofa and their own duvet which they like very much.

On the 13th to mark their birthday we had a little party with their favourite foods (pheasant, duck, venison and rabbit), unwrapped their gifts, looked at photos of them from their first year with us, played with and tried on their gifts and just had a nice family evening. I made a slide show for those interested the link is:

http://www.slide.com/r/sCMEZMfVxj-rc6SUKcML4YverdTZVLlc?previous_view=mscd_embedded_url&view=original

Harry and Elspeth are the most wonderful fur kids a girl could ask for and I am so happy to be part of their lives.

MINE!

So the night before last I was in Inari and Kitsune's bedroom feeding them, cleaning up after them, playing with them etc. When I was about ready for bed I went to leave the room and Inari shot past me into the hallway and right into Sprite (my papillon and Harry's best friend)!

I was a little worried as she a fair amount bigger then him and accustom to playing with the Corsacs.

Inari froze and Sprites tail started wagging like mad, she was so excited. She shoved her nose in his left ear and looked at me with this really happy look on her face, Inari looked at me with the most worried look on his face. I knelt down to pick him up and he suddenly spun round to look at Sprite squealed and started wagging his tail up and down then started to sniff her all over. Sprite seemed a little confused but went with it, she lay on the floor as dogs do and he put his head in her ear which she took as 'lets play!' so they started chasing each other up and down the hall Inari squealing with delight.

I am so happy my big eared kids (well 2 of them) like each other! It was so funny after though when I went to put Harry to bed and he rubbed himself all over myself and Sprite as we are HIS and it seems playing with a different male fox is just not on! He sulked for a little while but when I dozed off on his sofa he decided to clean my feet which seemed to mean 'I forgive you'.

I do wonder if I should ever let Harry meet Inari, they may argue over me which sounds big headed but Harry is a Mummy's boy and Inari seems quite fond of me. . . We shall see.

Where have Harry and Elspeth been?!

That is the question that so many people have asked me, I had no idea so many people read our blog until I was inundated with e-mails from lovely people like you who were worried about the wonderful Flashmans.

Well first off let me say I am so very, very sorry to have kept you all waiting so very long for an update, I have been very busy with work but that is no excuse now is it?

Well let me see where did we leave off. . .

On July 25th Harry and Elspeth were meant to go to the Arc in Evesham for Exotic keepers awareness day. I was very excited about this as they were to be the only two foxes there bar the red foxes that reside at the sanctuary and loads of people were excited about seeing them. The night before I was getting their crate ready for the morning when Harry and Elspeth were playing and having a nice time but then Harry seemed to get the wrong end of the stick and thought that Elspeth was interested in doing more then just playing around.

Harry started pinning her to the floor which she normally would deal with by pushing him off if she is not interested but today when she did that she had rolled onto her back and Harry bit her leg quite a bit harder then he intended.

(I am quite confused in his behaviour as he seems to be 'in the mood' one hell of allot for an animal that is meant to have seasons for this.)

Anyway as soon as he bit her more or less there was blood all over the floor. Elspeth had ran away under the sofa.

I got her to come out and saw that Harry had nicked an artery in her leg. No matter how much pressure I applied the blood was not stopping.

I remembered that only a few days prior to this a member of Sybil's den had said that Cayenne pepper was good for stopping bleeding and so I ran to the kitchen
I was worrying which is very unlike me Elspeth is my baby and I was so worried about her.

I thankfully had Cayenne pepper. I sprinkled it....or more almost tipped the whole jar on her wound and hey presto it started to clot. About 10 mins later Elspeth moved and knocked the pepper off and the blood started again but I put some more on and we were safe once more. I took her to the vets the next morning.

So I was told to keep it clean and been given a cone for her head so she does not pull off the new dressing...Thing is the pepper I used the night before worked fine at keeping her off it AND she didn't have to look like a lamp.


So on July 25th instead of telling the world how great foxes are Elspeth was sleeping and being treated like a princess...A very, VERY grumpy princess. Oh well there is always next year.

One week after her injury she was totally fine bar a scab where the puncture was, amazing!

On August 28th our family gained two new additions, two beautiful fennec foxes Inari and Kitsune. We finally got after much thought, consideration and waiting. They are settling in really well but I have not let them meet Harry and Elspeth yet, I want to do that when they are more confident.

(Kitsune top, Inari bottom taken prior to first bath so quite scruffy looking)

Inari (the male) is much smaller then Kitsune even though he is meant to be older, he is also much more confident around me.

Kitsune was quite nervous around us and I was a bit concerned about her as she had various issues such as her front paws claws have been cut so short that the quick is right at the end of them, it looks like the quick has been cut, you could touch it. . . Her elbows and such are red and bare of fur she also (I discovered when I took her to the vets only a couple of days after getting her) had ring worm. . .

We treated her ringworm with the meds the vet gave us and then when bathing her every other day proved too stressful we decided to use vinegar as many people who had dealt with ring worm before had advised me that it would work, which thankfully it did!

It is amazing how different Fennecs are from Corsacs when I first got Inari and Kitsune I gave them a bath as they really needed it and it was amazing how easy it was! Unlike Harry and Elspeth they really did not like having a bath but as they are so small it was fast and easy. Also unlike Corsacs if you pick up a worried fennec it will go limp where a worried Corsac will wiggle to get free.

After we towled them off my partner and I took them into our bedroom with a hot water bottle each and sat with a hot water bottle each on our knees and then a fennec atop of that. They both seemed to really like the heat as it was then 3am and seeing as we live in an old house it was quite cold.


When we decided to actually go to sleep and we put them in their sleeping crate Inari sorted out the blankets for both of them and then lay down which was cute. I had put a water bottle in with them but they seem to have not noticed it was the water bottle and not me that was warming them up and so totally avoided it.

I must say it is so funny to see them eat. Harry and Elspeth go for meat normally over the veggies unless it is curly kale or basil (herb I know but they eat it like it is going out of fashion). Inari and Kitsune go for the veggies over everything else and wolf it down. Thus far Kitsune though the bigger of the two has always gone to take food second where with Harry and Elspeth it is always Elspeth who goes first.

I think that is more or less you all caught up!
Here is a video of Harry and Elspeth in their bedroom:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfwxoFfMsEM

And a new one of them talking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kNHGE5C1FA

Harry

Harry

Harry on the back of his sofa in his bedroom.

Harry left Elspeth Right

Elspeth talks

I was looking through a SDHC card and noticed I had loads of videos of my babies I had not got round to uploading so heres one of Elspeth:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdQxzbUexh0

Enjoy!

Elspeth's corner

As you may all have noticed I have not been posting many blogs as of late. Do not worry nothing is wrong, just my internet security has decided that nothing is safe including my blog which make no sense at all so today I went to get a new internet security so now everything is back to normal.

So with the warm weather Harry and Elspeth have had no idea what do do with themselves! They have mostly been sprawled out in front of various fans around the house trying to cool down, they have also both decided they they are quite partial to frozen Mango now weather this is just as it is cold or they like the taste I am unsure but it keeps them happy.

Bedtime in their crate has been nothing but arguments as Harry wants to cuddle the same as in the winter but Elspeth really does not and gets very mad at Harry when he tries to. I tried getting them their very own fan so that instead of sharing mine which oscillates they could have one just pointing at them but this did not help so I tried separating them into two crates which also did not help as they screamed for one another even though they were next to one another. I decided in the end to get a second HUGE crate and attach it to the first and put Harry's favourite carrier and his blanket in there so maybe he would get the idea that Elspeth wants peace. It worked and I really have no idea how! I mean when they were in one crate Harry would not sleep away from Elspeth but now he seems to think of the extension as his own little night time play room.

I have also changed their suspended bed in Elspeth's crate to instead of being made of a pillow case and a pillow to being a baby changing mat, still with the bars through it of coarse to suspend it. I did this as Elspeth has gained weight and when she would sit on the fabric one after about seven nights is would rip and the pillow would fall out so I thought the plastic may be more hard wearing.... Well actually the day after I put it up she had half pulled it down and by the next day she had created herself a cave sort of thing at the back of the crate! It would seem she had been pulling it down all along! What a sneaky fox.

So now Elspeth has this very girly bit of the crate with her pink fleece blanket and her pink wall, it looks very nice! She also keeps everything she liberates back there which as of late has changed from underwear and onto soft toys and throw cushions.

The other day my partner got seven pairs of socks with foxes on them. He got me so many as Harry is a sock monster and always runs off with my socks and with 7 pairs there is a chance I might be able to retain a pair hehe!

Given they are red foxes but foxes none the less!

Baby girls seriously hurt in fox attack

Below quote taken from :http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20100607/tuk-baby-girls-seriously-hurt-in-fox-att-dba1618.html

Officers and paramedics were called to a house in Homerton, east London, on Saturday night to reports that the animal had attacked the nine-month-old sisters.

A police source said the fox apparently entered through a door on the ground floor that had been left open for ventilation, before attacking the twins in an upstairs room. Their four-year-old brother, who was also sleeping upstairs, escaped injury.

Police said the little girls are in a "serious but stable condition" at the Royal London Hospital. They both suffered arm wounds and one of the girls is believed to have facial injuries.
After the attack, pest controllers set fox traps in the back garden. A fox was discovered in one of the devices on Sunday night and was humanely destroyed by a vet later

The above upsets me immensley and it is not just because I love foxes so much but that I did not think that people could sink so low.

I honestly do not think it was a fox.

Foxes are very timid animals, they do not like to be around humans so I really do not see one going into a house that to them will stink of humans.

As it was an urban fox I also do not think that it would be starved and thus I have no idea why it would attack a human, I mean we do not have rabies in this country and the only documented fox attacks I have heard of have been by rabid foxes.

Occasionally the press reports attacks on children that are said to be by foxes, but very often the bite wounds do not appear to be typical fox bites. It is not impossible that a child could be bitten by a fox but, if it occurs, it is extremely rare. In comparison, the risk of injury from domestic dogs and cats is very much higher. For example, in the USA about 5 million people are bitten by dogs each year and 15 to 20 people die from dog bites yearly. Most of the victims are children. Similarly, there are more than 400,000 cat bites each year in the USA. There are no good statistics from Britain, but it is likely that the number of dog and cat bites is around a fifth of those recorded in the USA. Even in countries where rabies is present, humans are much more likely to be bitten by a rabid domestic dog than by a fox.

The risks of people being attacked by a fox are negligible compared to the risks of being attacked by a domestic dog or cat.

(Above quote taken from http://www.thefoxwebsite.org/urbanfoxes/urbanconflict.html)

I honestly think it may well be a case of 'Oh no the dogs bitten the kids, say it is a wild animal so the dog is not put down.'.

I had to post about this as I feel people are to quick to blame the fox, the wolf and all other animals they they do not understand. I think it is deeply disturbing that just on one persons word and people are ready to go on a killing spree as they are affraid of what they do not understand...

Trapping and killing a random urban fox who may or may not have had anything what so ever to do with this is plain wrong and it upsets me immensely!

My heart is heavy and my head is held low as I am ashamed to be a human. I am however glad that Harry and Elspeth are part of my life and more importantly my daughters life and thus she will not turn out like any of the people involved in this.

Totally forgot

I totally forgot to upload this to you tube back in April so here you all go!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKzdq-iKz4k

I have not forgotten about all you you, do not worry I have just been really busy house hunting and stuff.
Shall get some photos of my not so furry fur kids this evening.

TTFN!