Blue Ridge Wildlife Center Patient of the Week: Red Fox

This fox needed a blood transfusion. Photos BRWC

This young fox was brought to us on Thanksgiving Day, after she was contained for removal from an unusual situation.

She had been frequenting a busy establishment for several weeks, where the finder reported multiple observations of her scavenging from their dumpster. While foxes scavenging in an urban area isn’t too uncommon, our level of concern jumped significantly after we discovered that many patrons of this establishment had been seen feeding her directly out of their hands. After associating humans with receiving these easy meals, she had become increasingly bolder to the point of regularly entering the building for food, ignoring attempts to shoo her away.

Her habituation to people made containment abnormally easy—when the finder set a dog crate in front of her, this fox voluntarily walked right in.

While she was relatively alert and afraid of our staff on intake, she was quiet and not showing normal fear behaviors like a healthy, adult fox should. Although her radiographs revealed she had had an old traumatic injury that caused broken ribs, and her mites and emaciation explained her desperation for food, she wasn’t showing much improvement, and in some ways her behavior had gotten worse.

During rechecks on blood, Dr. Emily found many of her red blood cell percentage to be critically low, to the point we were shocked that she was as active and mobile as she was. It was determined she would need a blood transfusion in order to give her the best chance at recovery.

But how does one give a blood transfusion to a wild animal?

Unlike human blood, there are no blood banks or methods of storing wild animal blood for moments like these. Instead, blood must be taken from a donor and transfused shortly after. Thankfully, the first blood transfusion has low reaction risk and does not require type-matching, and we luckily had an appropriate donor on site.

This procedure required multiple teams to be set up both to sedate and restrain the donor for drawing blood (top photo), as well as to sedate and monitor the patient while waiting for the transfusion as well as during the entire set up (bottom photo).

Then monitoring was required afterwards to make sure both animals recovered appropriately and there were no adverse reactions.

While we can’t be sure exactly what caused this fox’s anemia to become so severe, we suspect this must have been a slow-going, chronic issue this patient has been dealing with and adjusting to over time, likely from the traumatic event that left her with broken ribs.

It’s likely that with this injury, her emaciation, and the onset of mange, she didn’t have the ability to regenerate enough blood on her own, and with each additional health issue, it only made it worse.

This fox is doing well in care and has been improving consistently!

She still has a ways to go, but as always, we are hopeful for a full recovery and release.

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