Foxes
In Redwall
- Alignment: Evil
- Nicknames: Brushtail
- Appearance: Foxes look like bipedal foxes from our world with
clothes. Vixens, who are almost always seers, often wear mystical
clothing with bones and the like. They tend to be slim and wiry, or
otherwise fairly thin, with slitted eyes that are most often green, gold, or
occasionally brown. The closest thing a fox gets to beautiful is an
evil sort of attractiveness. A fox's face is often finely shaped, with
a narrow snout.
- Life Span: Foxes seem to have a longer lifespan than some of the
smaller creatures like rats.
- Diet: Foxes eat just about anything.
- Typical Personality: Most foxes, true to species, are crafty and
sly and intelligent. Many have leadership positions in vermin hordes,
though they make excellent thieves, spies, or traitors. Vixens are often seers, mystics who travel close to a horde
leader and advise him on various matters. They are very versatile and
have any accent or none. Most seem to prefer brains to brawn.
Outside Redwall
- Classification: Order: Carnivora; Family: Canidae; Species: Vulpes vulpes
- Other Names: red fox
- Appearance: Foxes look like small dogs with narrower noses,
reddish-orange fur, and thick, 40cm brush-tails. Males are about
67-72cm long and weigh 6-7kg, while females are 62-67cm long on average and
weigh around 5-6kg.
- Life Span: Most foxes live to be only one or two years old in the
wild, though some have lived up to 9 years old.
- Diet: Foxes eat crabs and dead seabirds when they live in salt
marshes; small mammals such as voles and rabbits in lowland rural areas; as
well as earthworms, beetles, fruit (particularly blackberries) and small
birds. Foxes eat around .5 - 1 kg of food a day.
- Habitat: Foxes can be found in sand dunes, marshes, mountains, and
urban areas. They're very adaptable and can live just about
anywhere. Foxes live in family groups of a dog fox and a vixen and
their cubs, though sometimes there can be many mated pairs in a single
family group. Foxes live in dens, called earths, which may be
dug by the foxes or may be burrows dug by some other creature.
- Typical Personality: Foxes are known to be playful, and are expert
hunters. They are semi-territorial but not too much so.
- Habits: When hunting mice, foxes will creep up on the mice and then
leap very high into the air onto their prey by pinning them with their
forelegs. The fox then hops down on the mouse and pins it. Foxes
are mostly nocturnal but come out in the daytime on occasion.
- Life Cycle: Usually only one vixen in a family group has cubs, and
only once a year, usually in the spring. Each litter has four or five
cubs who begin to venture out of the earth when they are four weeks old and
are fully weaned after 8 to 10 weeks, but remain with the vixen until the
autumn after their birth.
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