PLAINFIELD-- Problem: three curious red fox pups with their heads stuck in a storm drain grate, their mother screaming for them from their nearby den.
Solution: dishwashing detergent.
A Starkweather Road resident discovered the stranded pups Friday about 6 p.m. and called police. Animal Control Officer Karen Stone responded and called local firefighters for help.
The firefighters were able to pry the grate up a bit, but they had no tool to cut the thick metal, Stone said Monday. So she tried oiling their heads with Vaseline to push them back through. That didn't work. Neither did corn oil.
Finally, Stone said, she soaped the pups' heads with Dawn dishwashing detergent, and through a laborious process — the pups straining up the wrong way, biting at her gloved hands, the mother continuing to wail — she was able to push their ears down and through the grate. The third pup, which had a larger head than the other two, was the most difficult, Stone said.
Stone placed the pups in a dog crate in her van, drove them up near the den and released them. They scampered away toward home.
"Except for being a little soapy, I think they were OK," she said.A boy riding his bicycle had seen two of the pups stuck in the grate on Thursday. The third one popped up Friday. Just how they got snagged no one knows, but a dead mouse was lying near the grate on Friday and the pups may have been after that, Stone said. Or the mother may have placed the mouse there to try and coax her babies out.
Nothing can be done to prevent the pups from repeating their predicament, but Stone said she drives by now and then to check the grate. "Hopefully, they learned their lesson," she said.
The red fox mother is familiar to residents of the remote area. In years past, the fox family has entered the 6-inch diameter pipe that opens in the road drain and a culvert in a nearby field, Stone said.
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