The kids and I went on a bike excursion to Massena recently. We stopped and picked up sandwiches at On a Roll and headed out to Robert Moses State Park for a picnic. When we got to one of our favorite spots, I saw an animal walking on the path over by the gazebo. “A fox!” I shouted to Otis and June. “Wait! Two foxes! No! Three!” I parked the car and hopped out to confirm, then I ran back and got the kids.

We walked carefully down the path and found a family of (at least) four foxes that had clearly spent the winter in a little culvert under the path. We set up with our sandwiches nearby and watched them playing:

They were a little shy, but not nearly as much as you’d expect. And judging from how they were all a pretty similar size, we guessed that they were all siblings and that mom/dad were either sleeping in the pipe or out picking up lunch.

A Massena old-timer came by and was just as excited. He told us how he’d been walking his dog there all winter and couldn’t figure out why the old hound always stopped to sniff around the pipe. He asked for a chunk of June’s sandwich (I reluctantly obliged) and he threw it over. A couple of the foxes fought over it playfully.

We decided to see how close we could get. Pretty close:

(I made sure to explain the importance of resisting the urge to pet fuzzy wild animals.)