Red Fox Eating Apples

For Throwback Thursday here's a Red Fox I met back in August of 2014 at Great Swamp. (A short video is here.)

While I had grown up thinking of foxes as carnivores, this one was having green apples for dinner. Perhaps a squirrel or rabbit would have been a preferable meal, but a fox has to eat. And just like there are occurrences of herbivores eating meat, foxes will eat vegetation on occasion. And whatever taste drawbacks there might have been, the apples were both abundant and easily/safely obtained. (I suspect that most wild animals, while they certainly have their preferences, can't afford to be picky eaters.)

It looked to me like the fox ate several of the apples before more people arriving inspired it to retreat into the woods. 

August 10, 2014 at Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
Photo 258672992, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

August 10, 2014 at Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
Photo 258672978, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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