Craig McGettrick and a coworker were clearing waste from an English garden in 2017 when they came across an old mattress. They were fortunate to discover five tiny, adorable puppies inside the mattress. It could have been his good fortune or bad luck that what he thought were puppies were actually something quite different. “Those were probably the only two options I knew of,” McGettrick told The Dodo.
We assumed they were dumped knowing we were going to remove the trash.” McGettrick, a good Samaritan at heart, did the right thing and sent them to an animal rescue center after placing them in a cardboard box. He also posted pictures of the animals on Facebook after dropping them off. McGettrick’s photos of the alleged puppies caught the attention of Martin Hemmington, the founder of the National Fox Welfare Society.
“We were contacted by a lovely lady called Beccie through our Facebook Page; Beccie had sent a few photos asking if the babies in the photos were indeed fox cubs,” the Founder wrote in a Facebook post. We confirmed that they were. Beccie informed us that they had been mistakenly taken to a rescue center in Liverpool as puppies rather than fox cubs.” “Fox cubs don’t initially look like foxes when they are cubs, so it’s common for people to mistake them for dog puppies,” said Paul McDonald,
a local rescuer affiliated with Freshfields Animal Rescue. They are brown, as opposed to the red and ginger of adults.” The Fox Man, as McDonald is known, speculated that the mother fox may have used the mattress as a den for her children. “Vixens leave their cubs all the time while they are in the den,” McDonald said, “and as they get older, they’ll begin to explore their surroundings more and more, and become less dependent on mum as they get older.”
The fox cubs hadn’t had the chance to leave the den because they were so young. Following this discovery, Hemmington contacted McDonald and asked him to pick up the cubs from the center where they had been placed. Because The Fox Man wasn’t in the area, he asked one of his volunteers to pick up the cubs for him. Once he had the fox cubs in his possession, he did the only thing he could think of: he returned to the garden and attempted to reunite the cubs disguised as puppies with their mother.
“I didn’t give the cubs any milk so they’d be hungry and cry out for their mother, which they did,” McDonald explained. I placed them near where they were discovered because I knew the mother would be looking for them and would check the location where she last had them.” McDonald decided to put the cardboard box containing the cubs in the garden around 4 p.m. the same day. He also included a hot water bottle in the box to keep the babies warm for the mother.
McDonald sat down to wait for the mother after thoroughly preparing the cubs. And then she appeared. She initially took only one cub with her and left for well over an hour. “I believe once she’d picked up the first one and I knew the others were safe in the box, she waited until it got dark to get the rest because she must not have felt safe moving the cubs in daylight,” McDonald explained.
She began returning for her cubs after it got dark, and by 7 p.m., the mother fox had taken all of her cubs with her to safety. “Paul texted me a photo of the empty box,” Hemmington later posted on Facebook. Throughout this, I kept in touch with Beccie and Craig, and everyone was relieved that the cubs were back where they belonged- with mum!” Needless to say, Paul McDonald was overjoyed when the cubs who had been misidentified as puppies were returned to their mother.
“It made me feel ecstatic that the cubs went back to their mum, as it would have been a tragedy not only for the cubs not being brought up by their own mother but for the mother to lose her cubs. When nature is allowed to take its course, this is without a doubt the best type of rescue in my line of work.”