Four tiny baby foxes are being rehabilitated after they were found on a frozen lake in Minnesota on Valentine’s Day. Is it too much to say they’ve melted our hearts?
Videos by Outdoors
The red fox kits were spotted on the icy surface of Lake Minnetonka, about 15 miles from Minneapolis. According to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota (WRC), which rescued the kits, red foxes rarely give birth this early in the year. Usually, WRC doesn’t see babies till mid-March at the earliest.
“Our staff has a friendly competition each winter to guess when the first baby mammal will arrive [at the center],” WRC wrote in a recent Facebook post. “And this year we all lost!”
It’s lucky the kits were found—they were hypothermic and cold to the touch after a spell of freezing rain. The weather was too hostile to attempt reuniting the foxes with a parent, WRC wrote. Instead, they brought the kits back to the center to give them fluids and warm them up in an incubator.
Later, the rescuers transferred the kits to a partner organization that specializes in fox rehabilitation—but not before taking some adorable photos.
If you spot a baby animal in distress, call park authorities or a local wildlife rehabilitation center. It’s always best to leave a rescue to the experts. Human contact with young animals can make their parents shun them in some cases, which can often be its own death sentence. (You can consult this national directory of wildlife rehabilitation centers to find one near you.)
Need some more animal cuteness in your day? Check out our favorite wildlife webcams, featuring pandas, penguins, grizzlies, hedgehogs, and more.
