‘I think he’s a regular visitor.’ Fox holes up in Yellowknife bedroom

Yellowknife already has a children’s book named The Fox and My Boot. Not yet covered: The Fox and My Bedroom.

Camilla MacEachern faced that scenario on Thursday after thinking she heard her dog licking an empty food bowl.

“I was like, poor little fella, I’ve got to give him some breakfast. So I went in and there was a fox, like he’d been there before, standing over the dog dishes, licking the bowl,” she told Cabin Radio.

“He hid behind my little laundry rack and eventually ran into my bedroom.”

Foxes are a common sight in Yellowknife but rarely do they take up residence. MacEachern leaves her side door open in the mornings so she can hear the birds and the dog can freely roam, and she assumes that’s how the fox made its entrance.

“He was in there for about an hour,” she said of the fox’s bedroom sit-in. Eventually, she brought a neighbour over “for moral support” and called wildlife officers for backup. By this point, the fox was under the bed.

Before the wildlife cops could arrive, the fox casually made its way out of the bedroom and vanished into the yard and beyond.

“I think he’s a regular visitor,” said MacEachern, whose eyes have been opened by the chance encounter.

“I feel like he’s maybe been here before and eaten the dog food.”

MacEachern added the fox – who went unnamed by her through its morning ordeal – had “left a couple little gifts behind” as trip mementoes.

“Foxes, I think, are the perfect pet,” she said, while acknowledging actually keeping one as a pet is illegal under NWT legislation (as it is in most other places).

“They’re like a dog-cat combination and, if it was not faux pas and unacceptable, I absolutely would have kept Foxy,” she said, belatedly offering the animal a name, “and I think Foxy would have stayed.”