Georg Wilhelm Steller Describes Blue Foxes

 

 

     Georg Wilhelm Steller was a participant in the Vitus Bering expedition to Alaska in 1741. Bering was employed by Peter the Great to determine the extent of a land link between Asia and North America. Steller wrote a journal describing the voyage and exploration of what is now called Bering Straight. In his journal, Steller describes the fearlessness and aggression of Arctic blue foxes found on Bering Island.

     Of four-footed land animals there occur on Bering Island only the stone or Arctic foxes (Lagopus), which doubtless have been brought there on drift ice and which, fed on what was cast up by the sea, have increased indescribably. I had opportunity during our unfortunate sojourn on this island to become acquainted only too closely with the nature of this animal, which far surpasses the common fox in impudence, cunning and roguishness....
     They crowded into our dwellings by day and by night and stole everything that they could carry away, including articles that were of no use to them, like knives, sticks, bags, shoes, socks, caps, and so forth. They knew in such an unbelievably cunning way how to roll off a weight of several pods from our provision casks and to steal the meat from thence that at first we could hardly ascribe it to them. While skinning sea animals it often happened that we stabbed two or three foxes with our knives, because they wanted to tear the meat from our hands. However well we might bury something and weight it down with stones, they not only found it but, like human beings, pushed the stones away with their shoulders and, lying under them, helped each other do this with all their might. If we cached something up in the air on a post, they undermined the post so that it had to fall down, or one of them climbed up it like a monkey or cat and threw down the object with incredible skill and cunning. They observed all that we did and accompanied us on whatever project we undertook....
     When we sat down by the wayside they waited for us and played innumerable tricks in our sight, became constantly more impudent, and when we sat still came so near that they began to gnaw the straps on our new-fashioned, self-made shoes, and even the shoes themselves. If we lay down as if sleeping they sniffed at our nostrils to see whether we were dead or alive; if one held one's breath they even nipped our noses and were about to bite.
     When we first arrived they bit off the noses, fingers and toes of our dead while their graves were being dug; they also attacked the weak and ill to such an extent that one could hardly hold them off. One night when a sailor on his knees wanted to urinate out of the door of the hut, a fox snapped at the exposed part and, in spite of the man's cries, did not soon want to let go.


Reference:
Journal of the Voyage with Bering, 1741-42, by Georg Wilhelm Steller, ed. O.W. Frost (Stanford, California, 1988).