Considerate Russian ice fisherman hands out Snickers bar to wild fox. Location: Yamal Peninsula, Siberia.

Hat tip to Andrzej Stanisław Leśniewski.

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.

We had visitors.

We weren’t hunting ourselves, but the Old Dominion Hunt was meeting nearby and they put one to ground at our place, very near the house. I managed to trap my own dogs in the house, grabbed a camera, and went out and took a few snapshots.

Old Dominion huntsman Gerald Keal sounds his horn to reassemble the pack after Charles James has gone to ground in our woods yesterday. click on picture for larger image. Picture will enlarge again with one more click.

Congratulating the Old Dominion Hounds on a job well done.

Huntsman, pack, and whip begin moving off west.

The field follows Gerald and the hounds off into the woods. To the west, you see Fogg Mountain and the Blue Ridge.

It looks like the fox has decided that this beagle needs a little help with the hunting photo: Mircea Costina

Hat tip to Vanderleun who found the Mircea Costina photo via Dmitry.

The Shard Tower, under construction.

And they clearly have terrific noses for food, as this Sun story repeated by MSNBC demonstrates.

A fox cub was found living at the 72nd floor of the U.K.’s tallest skyscraper, it was reported Friday.

The animal, estimated to be six months old, had lived for at least two weeks on scraps of food left by workers about 945 feet up in the under-construction Shard tower in London, The Sun newspaper said.

Pest controllers managed to catch the fox and it was released near London Bridge after a health check, the tabloid reported. London is home to a large population of urban foxes.

“It was unbelievable,” local government official Les Leonard told The Sun. “To get up there the fox would have had to climb 71 sets of stairs and an old-fashioned ladder.

“We finally caught him in a large fox cage, baited with chicken carcasses.”

Image 82 of Karen L. Myers’s photo essay on the Blue Ridge Hunt’s meet last Monday at Locust Hill (photo: Karen L. Myers)

Last Monday was cold, and this fox must have been reluctant to move from his comfortable hiding spot among the cedars at Federal Hill. He waited until the hounds were nearly on top of him before leaving, producing this photo by Karen including the head of the lead hound.

He ran right up the hill past the ancient manor house, crossed the road in the direction of Farnley, then circled back through Cedarwood back into Federal Hill where he went to ground in a tremendous sink hole, partially covered with a variety of large stones and other debris, presumably to keep the cattle from falling in.

One of the knowledgeable old timers told me that foxes tend to head for that particular sinkhole only when they are unusually hard pressed. I thought this fox was pretty close to getting caught, and we were all glad to see such a handsome fellow get away.

Cyber vigilantism punishes kitten killing, adultery, and a variety of other things in China these days.

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Essex cockerel and hens victorious when fox invades their coop.

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The LA Times finds that Italians have better political scandals.

Reporting from Rome — The governor made off to a monastery after having affairs with transsexuals, but not before the cops videotaped a tryst, all flesh and white powder, and offered to sell copies to a magazine owned by the prime minister, who, at the time, was rumored to be entangled with an underage Neapolitan model.

Then one of the transsexuals, a Brazilian named Brenda, turned up naked and dead, her laptop computer submerged under a running tap. Oh, yeah, and the drug dealer who supplied cocaine to the governor and Brenda would meet his own demise. It’s an odd coincidence.

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Glenn Reynolds explains why the federal government has come to resemble Schlitz beer.

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Leo Grin, at Big Hollywood has a four part essay on Werner Herzog, Timothy Treadwell, and “Grizzly Man” (2005). Pt1, Pt2, Pt3, Pt4.

Big Hollywood is promising more in-depth reviews of significant conservative films.

Multiple hat tips to Karen L. Myers.

Imelda probably looks something like this

Foxes are playful and mischievous, and are known on occasion to develop a hobby of collecting things. Rita Mae Brown‘s Virgina-based murder mystery novels have featured crucial clues discovered hoarded away in a fox’s den.

The International news-reading community is bemused today over the account in Spiegel of the criminal career of a German vixen, who has developed a passion for shoes worthy of Sex and the City‘s heroine Carrie Bradshaw.

A vixen has stolen more than 120 shoes from doorsteps in the German town of Föhren over the last year, amassing a collection that would impress even Imelda Marcos. Little bite marks on the laces suggest they’re intended as toys for her cubs.

For more than a year, the people of Föhren, a small town in the wooded Eifel hills of western Germany, wondered who was going around stealing shoes from their doorsteps and garden terraces at night. Well over 100 muddy hiking shoes, wet Wellingtons, steel-capped workman’s boots, flipflops and old slippers went missing.

The mystery has now been solved after a forestry worker discovered an Imelda Marcos-scale collection of footwear in a fox’s den in nearby woods.

The bushy-tailed culprit, believed to be a vixen with a family of cubs, is still at large, and locals have two explanations for her kleptomania. Either she amassed them as toys for her children, or she simply likes collecting shoes, or both. So far 120 stolen shoes have been retrieved.