Winter 2005

A small predator enjoys some peace and quiet

Photography by Joe Nowak

A couple of years ago, history buff Barbara McDonough and a friend decided to visit Oak Woods Cemetery on Chicago's South Side. Many famous Chicagoans are buried there, among them Mayor Harold Washington, Olympic track star Jesse Owens, and physicist Enrico Fermi. The cemetery is also known as the final resting place of some 6,000 Confederate prisoners-of-war. But it has some remarkable live inhabitants, too.

"Did you see all those dogs there?!" McDonough asked as they drove past an old Jewish section of the cemetery. They stopped, backed up, and soon realized that the dogs were actually foxes. They were gray foxes, Urocyon cinereoargenteus, a hard-to-spot native mammal of the Chicago region. "They were all over everything," says McDonough. "It was so fascinating. I told everybody I knew."

Photographer Joe Nowak and his wife Marlene, friends of McDonough's, visited the cemetery two days later. They found about 15 foxes, which were skittish but would frequently stand at attention, accustomed to being fed by humans (a practice the cemetery discourages).

"There are reports of seeing gray foxes in residential areas as well as forest preserves," says Chris Anchor of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. "Because they're catlike in behavior, they're not seen nearly as often as the red fox or the coyote." Groundskeeper Victor Remarcik believes they may have reached the cemetery by traveling along nearby railroad tracks.

"They want someplace that's desolate," says Marlene Nowak. "Cemeteries aren't usually overpopulated with live people."

"The foxes kind of keep to themselves. If you get too close, they'll go away," says Remarcik.

These particular foxes seem to enjoy their quiet neighborhood. They serve as a reminder that even something as wild and awesome as a tree-climbing fox might be right around the corner. But healthy populations can't depend solely on cemeteries. Ongoing restoration efforts to save our region's wild savannas and oak woods will ensure that these beauties are a part of our future as well as our history.

— Don Parker with Lauren Murrow

See also:

Tree Fox (CW, Winter 2004)