How a sick silver fox stole the hearts of a caring P.E.I. couple

An eastern P.E.I. couple have developed a special bond with a silver fox they helped nurture back to health.

Little Miracle, as he has been named, was first spotted on Linda and Brian Stewart's property last New Year's Day. One of his eyes was swollen shut, patches of fur were missing and he was cold and shivering. 

"He was pretty raggedy looking and when he left here he actually didn't even have enough energy to run," Linda Stewart said.

The fox was suffering from sarcoptic mange, a disease caused by a mite that burrows itself into surface layers of skin, causing itching and irritation.

Stewart had begun to keep an eye out for the sickly fox after it was reported in the area by the non-profit group Fox Aid P.E.I. The group is operated by "concerned Islanders helping P.E.I. mange foxes," according to its Facebook page.

Little Miracle showed up the next day. A volunteer suggested Stewart begin feeding the fox doses of the pet medicine Bravecto, wrapped in a meatball, in three-month intervals. 

Almost nine months later, Little Miracle is thriving, she said. He has a "magnificent tail," looks well-fed and is full of playful energy.

"We've often said, I wish we could pat him, wish we could … hug him. But we wouldn't. We wouldn't do that because he's still a wild animal."

Stewart believes he has learned to hunt on his own, but he still stops by most nights to say hello and maybe mooch a meatball.

"Sometimes he'll ask — I'll put that in quotation marks — for an extra meatball, for instance, to take in his mouth, to carry away, to bury, and he will look right into our eyes. I mean, he communicates with us."

Stewart knows everyone might not agree with the idea of feeding or even interacting with wild animals. In fact, people can be fined for feeding, enticing or disturbing wildlife in places like P.E.I. National Park, according to Parks Canada.

Pierre-Yves Daoust, a wildlife veterinarian on P.E.I., said he has very deep empathy for all forms of wildlife, and the question of whether humans should get involved in their well-being is "a difficult one."

"From my perspective, the bottom line is that it is not a good idea to feed wildlife for whatever reason," he said in an email.

"It decreases the animals' natural fear of humans, almost always to their detriment in the long term, and it artificially inflates their population when natural resources are not there to maintain it. Nature tries to rectify this by reducing these abnormally high numbers through disease or starvation."