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Couple Startled by Noises in the Night Find Animals Can Be a Real Scream
In Vermont, a red fox licks its chops while devouring a chicken it had snatched from a nearby farm.
(By Francis Moran -- Associated Press)
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The expert replied:
Dear Teri:
One possibility is the bobcat. Several sites indicate that bobcats scream like a woman. . . . [Alicia Bateman's Web site] has examples of screams and says that foxes and cougars produce a vocalization somewhat similar to a woman screaming. [Another Web site] gives details of people claiming to see cougars in Virginia, so it is possible that you heard a cougar. The fisher can also make a screaming sound and [another Web site] says there are reports of fishers living along the border of Virginia. . . . I think the most likely candidates are the bobcat and fox, but you may have been lucky enough to hear a cougar or a fisher.
Lucky enough? You bet.
Anyway, I began with bobcats. But wait, are there bobcats in Bethesda? A few blocks from the D.C. line? Or cougars? And what in the world is a fisher?
Fishers eat porcupines, I found out, and they live in the Adirondacks. They are related to the weasel. They have been found as far south as Hopewell Township, N.J. Hmm, not likely.
I turned to YouTube, typing in "red fox."
Let me see: "Red fox katusha?" That's not it. "Red Fox Inn." Isn't that the place in Middleburg where Liz Taylor used to hang out with Sen. John Warner? "Urban Red Fox: Meet the Foxes" takes place somewhere in London. In the film clip, this heavyset bald guy with a big rifle shoots one through a window, kills it and then waits for its mate to arrive. Shoots him, too. I am no raving-mad member of PETA, but this is a very disturbing video, although it helped solve my mystery. The shriek of the fox that found and sniffed around its dead mate resembled the chilling cries from the night before.
Then I typed in "fox scream" on YouTube and there it was, the same chilling series of screams in the night. The videotape shows two glowing eyes in the dark, and then the outline of the red fox became visible. This was what I was looking for.
Our neighbors returned from their vacation. My wife told them about the screams from their back yard. "I'm not surprised," the woman said. In her mother's back yard, just a few blocks away, a den of foxes was found. Wow, right here near the D.C. line.
The case is indeed closed. There will be no more thoughts of Janet Leigh shrieking in the night. The next time I hear the screams, I hope to remember images from the Walt Disney movie, "The Fox and the Hound."
-- Kunio Francis Tanabe, Bethesda
