A family of foxes has taken up residence in Chicago’s Lurie Garden. (Courtesy of Lurie Garden)
For a bunch of hardened urbanites, Chicagoans sure do have a soft spot when it comes to animals.
They don’t even have to be cute — sorry, Chance and Chonk — but it helps, as we saw this week when the city went gaga for a family of foxes living in Lurie Garden.
The kits are adorable, to be sure, but a big part of their appeal has also been the surprising discovery by many that there are foxes in Chicago. Add the critters to coyotes, beavers, minks, opossums, groundhogs and muskrats that are finding the habitat they need in the middle of a major metropolis.
Staff at Lurie Garden and Millennium Park have seen adult foxes before, but a family with six kits is a first, said Kathryn Deery, the garden’s head horticulturist.
“We are overjoyed the fox family has chosen Lurie Garden as their homebase. Through our plant choices and responsible management practices, Lurie Garden has been working toward building a healthy ecosystem for many years,” Deery said. “Our resident fox family is an indication of the garden’s success as a refuge for humans and wildlife alike.”
Playtime for foxes in Lurie Garden. (Courtesy of Lurie Garden)
While the foxes are an excellent example of the adage “nature finds a way,” it’s also true that sometimes nature needs a helping hand. And Chicago is here for that, too.
Brookfield Zoo has just shared photos of a litter of seven Mexican wolf puppies born at the zoo in late April. But don’t get too attached to the cuties — six of them have already been placed with wild packs in Arizona and New Mexico, part of Brookfield’s participation in a program to bring the subspecies back from the brink of extinction and diversify the gene pool at the same time.
A count conducted over the winter estimates a 23% increase in the 2022 wild population over 2021. According to Brookfield Zoo officials, this marks the seventh consecutive year of population growth and a more than doubling of size since 2017.
Seven Mexican wolf puppies were born at Brookfield Zoo in April. After receiving checkups, six of them were introduced to wild packs in Arizona and New Mexico. (Courtesy of CZS-Brookfield Zoo)
Here’s what else caught our attention this week.
Gardens
Speaking of Lurie Garden, the New York Times has an interesting interview with Piet Oudolf, who the Times identifies as “noted designer of the High Line.” And Lurie Garden. For Chicagoans who are attempting to incorporate more native plants into their home gardens, Oudolf has some relevant thoughts on the difference between creating a garden that benefits the environment and working on ecological restoration.
“If I was an ecologist working in a landscape, I would never use a nonnative, because it doesn’t belong. But we make gardens; we don’t make nature. We make gardens, and in gardens I think I’m allowed to use plants that I like,” Oudolf said. But he was quick to add, “The plants have to be not invasive, and not too competitive toward their neighbors.”
Watch the video below for Lurie’s appearance among Oudolf’s greatest hits.
Birds
Sticking with our theme, if you thought Mom and Pop Fox made an unusual choice for a home base at Lurie Garden, a couple of peregrine falcons just entered the conversation.
For the second year, Freyja and Apollo nested atop Michigan State’s football stadium. The pair successfully hatched four chicks — Pickles, Muhammad, Egbert and Swooper — which were banded this week by researchers in order to track the birds’ progress.
Banding falcon chicks is a fraught business, and the team of scientists protected themselves from potentially territorial parents by wearing hard hats and wielding umbrellas as shields.
Water
OK, this one has nothing to do with foxes. But it is tangentially related to Chicago.
We’ve been keeping a sharp eye on negotiations related to Colorado River usage because, well, hands off our Great Lakes.
So we were pleased to read that California, Nevada and Arizona reached a tentative deal to dial down their respective taps. Vox has an excellent explainer on the agreement and the issue at large.
Oceans
A gang of orcas, following a ringleader named White Gladis, is sinking boats in the Strait of Gibraltar.
Scientists think White Gladis suffered some sort of trauma associated with a boat, retaliated, and other orcas took note.
Some researchers have suggested the orcas might just be having fun.
“They are incredibly curious and playful animals and so this might be more of a play thing as opposed to an aggressive thing,” Deborah Giles, an orca researcher at the University of Washington and at the nonprofit Wild Orca, told Live Science.
Sure, maybe, but they are called killer whales for a reason.
One More
Because, why not. Enjoy the Memorial Day weekend.
Foxes, living their best life in the big city. (Courtesy Lurie Garden)
Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 | [email protected]
