Wolves, wild boars and foxes. They are not afraid of the devil. These animals, which actually belong in nature, are regularly spotted on the street. Usually in the evening or at night, but Mitch Gielen from Eindhoven saw one on Monday afternoon. Fortunately he still had the images, because his wife and children did not believe him at first. But it is indeed a fox that he saw walking through the Jan van de Capellelaan.
“It was around half past three,” says 36-year-old Gielen, who lives in the Eindhoven district of Tongelre. “We came back from vacation last night and I was washing my car when I saw that fox. The animal was nibbling on a garbage bag. Not surprising, because I think it was still a youngster. It also looked thin, poorly cared for and neglected.”
Gielen didn’t hesitate for a moment and filmed the meager animal as it crossed the road and continued its path over the sidewalk. People from the Ergon, the sheltered employment facility, who had parked their car there, also saw the fox walking. Eventually Mitch’s wife and children also believed his story when they saw the video.
“I get a lot of reports of foxes that have lost their way.”
“But where does he come from? I would not know. In the neighborhood where we live, there is no nature reserve where the fox could stay,” the Eindhoven resident wonders. So on Tuesday at work he can tell not only about the holiday, but also about the fox. “That will certainly happen at the coffee machine,” Gielen expects.
Frans Kapteijns, our nature expert par excellence, expects that more stories like this may emerge in the near future. “During this period I usually get a lot of reports of foxes that have lost their way. On their way to adulthood,” explains the forester from Oisterwijk.
“Male foxes have a habit of ejecting their young from the nest around September and October. Yeah, they’re tough bastards, those guys. They think it is high time for their offspring to stand on their own two feet. The more houses are built, the greater the chance that foxes will look for their own territory, not in nature, but in the inhabited world. That may also have been the case with this copy in Eindhoven. It seems logical to me that he looked so bad: the animal has to look for food on its own.”