The Baltimore Sun reports that today’s Preakness is going to have an additional, non-ticket-buying spectator. A red fox has taken up residence in the Baltimore race course grounds.

Dickie Small grew up fox hunting with his family in Baltimore County, and the veteran horse trainer has occasionally seen the skittish red or gray creatures running around various tracks over the years. So the sight of a red fox at Pimlico Race Course early one morning last month did not make Small blink.

The difference with this fox became quickly apparent — it kept coming out of its den, almost on a daily basis.

“If it rains, it stays in,” Small said Friday. “And sometimes it oversleeps.”

It has been spotted several times this week on or near the track as exercise riders took their horses out for an early morning workout. There have been rumors, at this stage unfounded, that one brave soul has been feeding the fox cat food.

“Most of the horses treat it like it’s a dog, they ignore it,” Small said. “Most of the riders don’t pay attention to it either. But one boy was scared and kept saying, ‘Get away, get away.’ He ended up getting dropped [fell off his horse] and had to walk back.”

Jack Sisterson, assistant trainer for Kentucky Derby champion I’ll Have Another, said he saw the fox Friday for the second time this week.

“He stays on the grass [of the turf track] and will put his paw or whatever you call it on the turf, but when the horses come by, he’ll jump back on the grass and sort of hang out watching,” Sisterson said. “It’s kind of amusing.”

Track officials don’t appear too concerned about the fox making a surprise appearance during Saturday’s running of the 137th Preakness Stakes. The last fox to have an impact on the race was Sly Fox, the 1898 champion.

In fact, Small said as more people showed up this week for the second leg of the Triple Crown, the fox seemed to be content staying in its den. Small thinks the fox lives somewhere near the infield — “around the tote board,” he said — and would likely be sleeping off a feast of trackside flowers by the time the tens of thousands begin to show up for the big race.

It’s a good policy to avoid some American cities run by corrupt democrat party machines with incompetent police departments full of officers hired on the basis of political considerations. WBAL reports the case of a Virginia couple who attended a baseball game in Baltimore, got lost, asked a police officer for directions, and were arrested.

Baltimore City police arrested a Virginia couple over the weekend after they asked an officer for directions.

WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team reporter David Collins said Joshua Kelly and Llara Brook, of Chantilly, Va., got lost leaving an Orioles game on Saturday. Collins reported a city officer arrested them for trespassing on a public street while they were asking for directions .

“In jail for eight hours—sleeping on a concrete floor next to a toilet,” Kelly said.

“It was a nightmare,” Brook said. “I was in there thinking I was just dreaming and waiting to wake up.”

This kind of thing is no joke. American city jails are unsanitary and dangerous places, where detainees are commonly housed in unsupervised conditions at the mercy of other prisoners.

For more than a decade, students from Loyola College have participated in the school’s Care-a-Van program, providing the homeless two nights a week with meals, such as turkey-and-cheese sandwiches and hot chocolate, as well as toiletries.

But on Nov. 14, a Health Department representative notified the students that they needed a city license to distribute food, and that distribution via a van could not be licensed, since licensing would require on-site hot and cold running water for volunteers serving the food to wash their hands. The college suspended the program, but students rebelled, and resumed distributing food to the local homeless anyway in a nearby park.

Facing a problem with the kind of publicity that might be associated with arresting people for feeding the poor during the Christmas season, city officials offered to compromise.

Under the agreement, the students will continue to be allowed to provide food for two more months, while city officials try to find a more permanent place for the charity work that complies with city regulations, according to Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, Baltimore’s health commissioner.