Point La Nim — A Toronto woman was thankful this weekend to catch a rare glimpse of the elusive New Brunswick silver fox.
They may call us the Picture Province, but it’s nearly impossible to capture one of these unusually fit, greying gentlemen on camera. Megan Illis, luckily, happened to be vacationing with her family when she saw the silver fox strolling along the beach near Point La Nim.
“I was playing with my new iPhone, snapping some pics of the kids,” she recalled, “when out of the corner of my eye I saw this really, really good-looking George Clooney type. In New Brunswick of all places! I hope he doesn’t mind that I took his photo. I didn’t really have a choice though — I knew my friends wouldn’t believe me otherwise.”
Silver foxes — recognizable by their silver hair, rugged jawlines and ripped abs — are slowly dying out in the Maritimes, and haven’t been seen in the wild in decades. A handful were witnessed back in the ’80s in local gyms and bars, but the sexy species has been migrating to more amenable places like Montreal and Vancouver.
“Maybe because their body fat percentage is so low, they can’t adopt New Brunswick’s high-calorie diet or adapt to its long, cold winters,” speculated Illis’s husband Greg. “We still don’t know what this one is doing here. Like is he from here or did he just get lost on his way to a modelling gig?”
“Yeah, I thought they went extinct long ago,” Illis chimed in. “After I the photo, I looked down for a second and the next minute he’d disappeared into the fog. I guess we’ll never know his story.”
The Manatee spoke with wildlife expert Jane Maddison, who is urging the public to resist the temptation to get too close to a silver fox, or to feed him.
“If you’re fortunate enough to see one, just leave him be,” she warned. “Don’t scare him off or fatten him up with our trash food. Don’t ruin his beauty for the rest of us.”