By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
He seems to be smart, friendly and even obedient. But is he just being sly like a fox?
For the past four months, a healthy looking male red fox has been making cameo appearances throughout Sea Isle City – roaming the streets, strolling along the Promenade, foraging for food in the dunes or appearing in a yard or two.
The fox has delighted Sea Isle residents. They have been posting photos and videos of him on social media, turning him into a local celebrity.
Annette Lombardo, chairwoman of the Sea Isle City Environmental Commission, has even given the fox a name: Cecil.
Lombardo said she isn’t sure why she started calling him Cecil. The name just seemed to fit somehow, she noted.
“People are buzzing about the fox since September, when they first started seeing him,” Lombardo said of the excitement the animal is generating around town.
One recent spotting of Cecil by Lombardo seemed to underscore the fox’s intelligence and apparent willingness to listen. Lombardo was driving to a local seafood restaurant to pick up dinner when she saw the fox standing in the middle of Park Road.
“He stopped and looked at me,” Lombardo recalled. “I said, ‘Cecil, get out of the road or else you’ll get hit.’ He looked at me again. I told him to get on the sidewalk, and he did.”
Lombardo is convinced that the fox is friendly, but not overly friendly in the sense that he might approach someone and get too close for comfort. She stressed that there is no cause for alarm.
“He is friendly but stays his distance,” she said.
Samantha Collins, a research scientist and wildlife biologist at the Wetlands Institute in Stone Harbor, emphasized that no one should try to approach or feed the fox.
“Any wildlife species, even with a deer, it’s not a good idea to feed or habituate them. That’s usually when wildlife become an issue more,” Collins said.
“Even though he’s a local celebrity, people need to let him do his thing and be a wild animal,” she added about the Sea Isle fox.
Collins said that some foxes are wary of people and will make their homes in rural areas far away from humans. Others, though, are more at ease living closer to humans and in an urban environment.
“There are some fox that really like to be around neighborhoods, and this is probably one,” she said of Sea Isle’s vulpine visitor. “It’s an easy way for him to get his meals by hanging out in the neighborhoods.”
Among other things, foxes eat small animals such as rabbits, birds, bird chicks or bird eggs. They also eat plants, Collins said.
Foxes are part of the local ecosystem and a natural inhabitant of New Jersey’s barrier islands, according to the state Division of Fish and Wildlife.
The Wetlands Institute, a research center for the shore’s fragile ecosystem and wildlife, does not collect data on the local fox population. Collins explained that without any data, she can’t definitely say whether the fox population is on the rise this year at the shore, although there are encouraging signs.
“From our observations, they seem to be pretty well off. But there’s no data to back that up,” she said.
Lombardo has been visited by the red fox at her home on 37th Street. She hopes that his appearance in Sea Isle suggests that the local fox population is making a comeback ever since the animals were decimated a few years ago by mange, a skin disease caused by parasites.
“This is the first one I have seen in four years,” she said. “I didn’t know if I would ever see a fox again.”
