A baby fox rescued from an Aberdeen storm drain earlier this week is recovering at the Phoenix Wildlife Center in Baltimore County, and the center's director expects she will be returned to the wild in the next few months.
"She's doing really well," Kathleen Woods, the center's executive director and a master rehabilitator, said Thursday.
Woods said the kit, who she estimates is 6 weeks old, is being treated with antibiotics for a couple of scratches on her left front leg.
"Other than that, she's eating well, she's doing everything that a little fox does," Woods said.
The fox was rescued from a storm drain grate on Applesby Lane by an Aberdeen public works crew Monday morning, and she is in the midst of a 10-day quarantine.
Once the quarantine ends, Woods said the baby can interact with other foxes at the Phoenix Wildlife Center, which is in the Phoenix area of northern Baltimore County and two miles from the Harford County line.
The kit will then stay at the center until August or September, when she is released at an appropriate site in Harford County, Woods said.
Costa Maistros, a DPW project foreman, who oversaw the crew that rescued the fox, said neighborhood residents reported what sounded like a dog barking coming from the area storm drains.
Maistros said crew members responded, and they also heard the barking. Workers inserted a camera they use to inspect pipes into the storm drain, and they moved it around until they spotted the fox.
"We eventually caught up with her and found her in there," he said.
The public works department provided photos of the rescue, including a camera image from around 9:50 a.m. Monday that showed a scared baby fox looking at the camera and standing in water.
"We had to move the camera a lot to get her to go in the direction we wanted her to go, so we could pull her out," Maistros said.
Maistros praised Eric Wilson, the camera technician, for keeping up with the kit.
"He was pretty quick to react and keep up with her as she ran around," he said.
He also praised other crew members who stationed themselves at various storm drain outlets and manholes, "just listening for her."
The fox was eventually guided out of the Applesby Lane storm drain into a waiting fishing net.
Maistros said the crew called several animal rescue organizations in the area, and they were referred to the Phoenix Wildlife Center.
He said they were given instructions on how to handle the creature, and they transferred her from the net to a cat carrier in the public works shop while waiting for a volunteer from Phoenix.
"They had somebody in the area that, luckily, was 20 minutes away," Maistros said.
Although they have protective gear and training for handling hazardous waste and sewage, the public works crew members did not handle the fox directly.
"We didn't want to hurt her, and we didn't want anybody to get bitten," Maistros said.
He said that "the only person to really handle her was the rescuer," who also had the proper protective gear, such as gloves.
He said the fox relaxed once she got in the pet carrier.
"She was just very scared and tense, shaky, her eyes were dilating and un-dilating, but once we got her out of the net and into a cat carrier, she relaxed a lot," Maistros said.
Maistros credited the fox's rescue to a "really fortunate series of events," including the crew having the equipment to inspect pipes and their proximity to the neighborhood, meaning they could respond "fairly quickly."
"They did a great job," Woods said of the Aberdeen crew. "They wore gloves; they did everything appropriately."