Animal Diaries Archive

Scary Lulu

30 June 2006

I’ve been in the Exotics Department now for over a year and I’ve formed a fantastic bond with the camels and the dingoes. But as for the other animals in the section, the foxes Kit and Roxy, the bond I share with those girls is definitely a lot different. I’m the scary one who is called sometimes to come down and persuade the girls to bed. As they are so scared of me this is an easy job as all I have to do is walk into the enclosure and they’ll rush off to the den. I have tried in the past to spend time with the girls and gain some sort of trust from them, but each time it has been unsuccessful, they are just far too shy. But lately the girls have been brave on the demo; in fact, they've never been better. Kit is coming down for a feed and Roxy comes to the edge of the rock.

So it seems like the best time now for me to start bonding again. I’ve already seen some encouraging signs from Roxy. Hopefully pretty soon I will have her feeding from my hand. At the moment she is happy standing about a metre away for me to throw it to her, while Kit is quite happy to watch and stay right away. So for the next few months I will be spending most afternoons with the girls trying to convince the foxes to be my friend and hopefully not long after that start doing daily fox shows. Which hopefully won’t be such a hard task because I don’t think I’m that scary… Am I?