Baby Foxes!

It must be spring because every day brings another miracle, and I feel a bit dazed by all the marvels I get to see. This morning it was a mother fox nursing her kits. This particular fox family has had a litter every spring for several years in my friends' back yard, and this year I finally got to see the babies!

My friends are very respectful of their fox neighbors, so we watched from inside the house at least a hundred feet away. I'm sure the foxes appreciated our discretion, but my poor little 300mm lens was not quite up to the job. There's a lot of cropping and pixel-boosting in these shots, but I think you can see enough to be overwhelmed by the sheer cuteness.

Here she is nursing four babies:

If you look very closely, the middle baby is licking its nose off after nursing with a little pink tongue:

And just so we don't forget in the midst of all the cuteness that they are wild animals, here's Mama Fox carrying around a formely-cute-but-now-dead squirrel that Papa Fox brought for her breakfast.

 Even though the babies are nursing and not eating solid food yet, they are still running after Mama's squirrel.

My kids were like that, too, when they were little. "Whatareyoueatingisityummygivemesome!"