Team Fox - Rescue Mission: New York pt 2 (Patreon)

Before I get to February 2020, I need to step back a couple of weeks.

In December and January, there were several posts about the foxes, the first asking to help raise funds - thousands and thousands of dollars - to build enclosures, the next set, sadly detailed the loss of two of the foxes lives. There was never anymore information than that; we knew that this could not stand - it was bad enough that they were not prepared to care for them in advance of receiving them and had knocked back every and all offers of help; but now, two of the foxes had died. We began, with the help of our friend and local contact, to push the authorities to investigate even harder.

January brought about the announcement of pregnant females - none of the foxes were spayed or neutered and they were being kept in the same crates. This made us truly so nervous; we know from years of experience that mothers in poor conditions have high mortality rates with their kits.

Then, it went quiet. There was nothing for sometime. No law enforcement, no posts from them.

This brings us to mid-February when we received an email from the NYS DEC Police about foxes they were looking to place - could we dare to hope?! Were they talking about our foxes?

We very quickly established that they were! They were looking to serve a warrant on this place and seize the animals in their care. They had visited, seen what we saw and they too were horrified and agreed something had to be done.

The law is slow; we all know this I am sure, but during a pandemic - the law is GLACIAL. There was also the issue of where we were going to place 29 foxes - we certainly had neither the room nor the legal ability to take them and thus commenced a mission involving nearly every fox rescue in the US.

There were so many moving parts to this rescue - 7 rescues, including us, the police, the DA, judges, different courts, covid-19 too of course; we can’t forget that!

SaveAFox coordinated everything - where the foxes were going, how enclosures were going to be funded, ensuring a vet was onsite when the warrant was executed, who needed to leave which state when and would be dropping off where on the return journey and all this around movement restrictions, isolation, PPE shortage, and of course a need for absolute secrecy, because the people who had these foxes threatened to release them if anyone tried to take them away.

At the beginning of last week, we had a provisional date. Enclosures were built, everyone’s schedules allowed them to be in NY when we all needed to be there and just as we were expecting to go ahead, coronavirus became a very serious threat.

Finally, on Monday of this week, we had a signed warrant, we were ready, the police were ready and the people with the foxes knew nothing and at 10am this morning, the warrant was executed.

Team Fox successfully caught - yes, some foxes were actually roaming lose on the property - 28 foxes. There were two injuries; one a broken leg - the untreated break is not recent, the poor fox who has it has been in pain for we don’t know how long - and the other to a paw.

All the foxes were assessed and treated, as needed, by the vet that accompanied all of us to the property. They were then loaded into our transport and are now on their way to their new homes. There’s still a lot we don’t know about their conditions. We don’t know if there were ever any babies, but there absolutely weren’t today and we don’t know what happened to fox #29.

We do however want to say a HUGE thank you to the following rescues for joining us on this mission, for driving across the country with us during a pandemic and for giving these foxes the life they so richly deserve.

- Foxes Journey Sanctuary

- Northern Neverland Fox Rescue

- Florida Fox Rescue

- Walking Wild Rescue

- Whispering Fox Wildlife Sanctuary

- Kim DeFisher - Arctic Fox Daily

You can find all of these rescues on social media, please give them some love and THANK YOU, all of you - your support on Patreon allows us to do things like this.

We will be making more info available as we learn more about our new fuzzy friends, watch this space!