Marmottes are digging up the cemetery
Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery is dealing with a lot of marmots this summer, which is being blamed on a shortage of foxes, their natural predator. What’s happened to the foxes this season is not explained.
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Kate
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Dhomas 12:23 on 2020-08-26 Permalink
There were a number of foxes living in the cemetery close to my place, le Repos Saint-Francois d’Assise. Sometime in autumn 2019, I saw them being trapped by some animal control types. I assumed they were being relocated because there was insufficient food for them here and some of the younger ones did look a little sickly. Maybe they relocated the ones on the mountain, too?
Ian 17:38 on 2020-08-26 Permalink
In years past my kids and I would go up to one of the high points in NDN and make a game of counting groundhog holes. This may be confirmation bias speaking but I think I did see substantially more groundhog holes than usual this year. I’ve been seeing more rabbits around town, too. I wonder if with the complaints about coyotes a few years back the city decided to quietly relocate as many predators as they could, and this is the result …
Kate 18:48 on 2020-08-26 Permalink
You do have to be careful walking down between graves that you don’t ankle yourself into a groundhog hole. Then there are the tinier, cuter holes made by chipmunks.
As for the foxes, we always seem to fall on our faces when we arbitrarily tinker with natural balances, even in the city. But the journalist in this article should have investigated further about the foxes.
Kevin 20:45 on 2020-08-26 Permalink
For the first time since I moved back to Canada I saw a racoon.
And the little jerks have ruined my apple trees…