Two fox scat

September 23.

I see on the top of the Cliffs to-day the dung of a fox, consisting of fur, with part of the jaw and one of the long rodent teeth of a woodchuck in it, and the rest of it huckleberry seeds with some whole berries. I saw exactly the same beyond Goose Pond a few days ago, on a rock,-- except that the tooth was much smaller, probably of a mouse.

It is evident, then, that the fox eats huckleberries and so contributes very much to the dispersion of this shrub, for there were a number of entire berries in its dung in both the last two I chanced to notice. To spread these seeds, Nature employs not only a great many birds but this restless ranger the fox.

Like ourselves, he likes two courses, rabbit and huckleberries.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 23, 1860

I see on the top of the Cliffs to-day the dung of a fox. See February 1, 1856 ("What gives to the excrements of the fox that clay color often, even at this season? Left on an eminence.");  February 26, 1855 ("Examine with glass some fox-dung from a tussock of grass amid the ice on the meadow. It appears to be composed two thirds of clay, and the rest a slate-colored fur and coarser white hairs, black-tipped, -- too coarse for the deer mouse. Is it that of the rabbit? This mingled with small bones. A mass as long as one’s finger."); June 12, 1853 ("I find, in the dry excrement of a fox left on a rock, the vertebra, and talons of a partridge which he has consumed."); June 25, 1860 ("Also the track of a fox over the sand, and find his excrement buried in the sand. . . full of fur as usual. What an unfailing supply of small game it secures that its excrement should be so generally of fur!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox