Rescue Network · Urban Wildlife

A Fox Trapped on the Top Floor of a Three Story Building: How Wildlife Aid Talked Him Down

He wasn’t your usual neighbor from across the hall. A young fox had climbed to the top of an apartment building and was perched next to an open window, and no one could say when he might jump.

Hey! Get down from there!

That is more or less what rescuer Louis must have been thinking when he reached the three floor apartment building and looked up. A young fox had made his way to the top and was sitting dangerously near an open window. It was a busy building, with residents coming and going and noise in every stairwell, and any one of those sounds could spook an animal that was already well beyond his comfort zone. A fox startled at that height has two choices, and one of them is a three story drop.

The full rescue, shot on a GoPro. Video courtesy of Wildlife Aid.

Thinking Fast, Moving Slow

Wildlife rescue at height is a matter of patience and arithmetic. Louis arrived, assessed the situation and weighed his options, which the video lays out one at a time. The first was to close the window from the outside, which would at least have kept the fox from stepping through it. That failed. The second involved a closer approach, and it nearly went wrong, a close call during an attempt to grab the fox that could have sent him over the edge. With no way of knowing when the animal would bolt, every move had to be small, deliberate and quiet.

What worked in the end was the least dramatic option of all. Louis managed to encourage the fox back into the building rather than forcing him, and a resident, standing by inside, shut the window behind him. It’s an elegant fix. Nothing was grabbed, nobody fell, and the one open exit to a long drop was closed from the safe side.

The best rescue is the one where nobody has to be grabbed.

The Fox Had Other Plans

With the fox now in a stairwell, Louis moved in to catch him and take him outside for release. The fox, however, wanted no part of it. He evaded Louis once more, and in a twist that no one could have scripted, simply made his own way down the stairs. All that was left for the rescuer to do was open the door at the bottom and let the young fox walk back out into the wild.

It is a good reminder that a wildlife rescue doesn’t always end with a capture, a carrier and a car ride. Sometimes the best thing a rescuer can do is remove the danger, point the animal toward the exit and get out of the way.

A short clip from the channel.

Why Foxes End Up in Strange Places

Red foxes are among the most adaptable mammals in Britain’s towns and cities. They den under sheds, nap on garden walls and raid bins, and young foxes in particular are curious, exploratory and inclined to follow a scent or a gap wherever it leads. A building with an open stairwell or a window left ajar can look, to a fox, like one more route across the territory. The trouble is that animals don’t understand the difference between a fence and a fifth floor, and once they have gone up, they may not know how to come back down.

The Rescue, Moment by Moment

• 0:00The call: a fox is on the top floor of a three story building, close to an open window.
• 0:15Louis arrives and assesses the scene.
• 0:56Option one: try to close the window from outside. It fails.
• 1:22Option two: a closer approach, ending in a close call.
• 2:21Option three: coax the fox back inside so a resident can shut the window.
• 3:09An attempt to catch him in the stairwell. The fox slips away.
• 3:52He finds his own way downstairs, and Louis opens the door.

It’s a small story, four minutes long, and it carries more than a few lessons about wildlife work. Plan more than one way out. Don’t force an animal that wants to leave. And sometimes the neighbor who turns up on the wrong floor is just a young fox who took a wrong turn and needed a door held open.