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Arctic Fox
Also called: Blue Fox, White Fox.
Images coming soon.
- Length
- 40 inches.
- Description
- Upper parts brown, belly whitish, fur everywhere bluish-gray at the base, and sometimes this colour predominates. In winter the whole animal is pure white.
- Range
- Arctic regions. There appear to be several geographic forms.
The little blue foxes of the far north live in communities or fox-villages, digging twenty or thirty burrows together in places where the soil is light and sandy. In summer they hunt for lemmings in the moss-grown tundras and barren grounds, digging them out of their holes or pouncing on them as they traverse their runways in the thick, wet sphagnous beds that cover the swamps and boggy places.
At this season the Arctic fox lives in luxury, for besides the lemmings there are numberless wild fowl nesting by the margin of every stream; and on the ridges, willow grouse and snow buntings hide their eggs in the reindeer moss and low bushes, or in warm hollows where the short-lived blossoms of the northland crowd together in dense borders of bright colours.
The lemmings are so numerous and easily caught that a very few hours each day spent in hunting them would easily keep the fox supplied with meat.
But the little stub-nosed blue-fox, though he lacks something of the wily shrewdness of the long-headed red fox of the woodland, is nevertheless a very intelligent beast.
Knowing that summer will soon be over, and the lemmings safe in their hidden roadways beneath ice and snow, and the birds all driven north before the cold, he hunts diligently while game is yet abundant, and brings home load after load of fat-bodied lemmings to be packed away in cold-storage for the winter.
Where the blue fox lives the frost never wholly leaves the ground; so he digs down in the moist turf until he reaches a temperature only just above freezing, and packs down several dozen lemmings in a place, covering them with moss and sods.
These caches of frozen lemmings are his principal food supply for the greater part of the year.
Of course there are always polar hares to be found, but the catching of them is not so easy, for of the two the hare's legs are longer, and there is small chance of creeping upon him unawares in that snow-sheeted country. Yet though the hunting is poor and he has plenty of meat laid by for the future, and a warm, cozy chamber underground, the arctic fox is not the sort of fellow that sits at home and nods in the corner waiting for spring to come back again.
In the fall his fur becomes perfectly white, like that of the Northern hare and the ermine, and the plumage of the ptarmigan, in order that he may creep unseen among the snow-drifts, avoiding the eyes of the game he is seeking, and of the gray wolf, who is his worst enemy. He may run cheerfully all day long, or all night long, without success, enjoying the chase for itself, and the cold free winds across the barrens, knowing all the time that he will not have to go hungry, unless, worse luck, the wolf or the wolverine has found his stores and robbed him. In that event he would probably turn thief himself and steal from his more fortunate neighbours, if his prowess at hunting failed to keep him supplied with food. It is pretty generally affirmed by the hunters that the young foxes of the year, who have as yet not established homes of their own, travel southward as the winter advances, killing their meat from day to day in new hunting grounds, or going hungry if the fortunes of the chase refuse to smile on them. But as the daylight lengthens and the sun swings in sight again across the south, they turn back to join the old foxes once more.
And now they pair and dig new burrows for themselves, where the little woolly fox cubs are born and brought up. Their Wander-Jahre is now over, and they go seriously to work bringing home all the lemmings they are able to kill and packing them down against the coming of another winter.
But these stores are all for themselves and not to be shared with their cubs, who, after their first summer of fun and carelessness is ended, must start south in their turn, each hunting for himself and avoiding the wolf and the half-breed trappers as best he may, until the season comes for him to return and settle down as a member of the same remote colony of little blue foxes on the shores of the frozen sea.
The Arctic fox is in many ways the most attractive of its race, being wholly free from the rank odour characteristic of the other foxes.
It is, moreover, remarkably neat and cleanly, both regarding its fur and in the care of its burrow. Although, as before stated, it is not so sly as the red fox, especially in the matter of traps, it is intelligent and quick to learn, and, living on the edge of a settlement, would undoubtedly soon be as difficult to outwit as its long-legged cousin of temperate latitudes.
In its family life it is certainly the equal, if not indeed the superior, of many of the native Eskimo tribes inhabiting the same regions, at least in matter of forethought, cleverness and morality.