Three foxes appear to have taken advantage of the fact there aren't as many students roaming ASU's Tempe campus these days.
The foxes were found in the ceiling of the Memorial Union on Sept. 29, a University spokesperson said.
With the help of an outside partner, the foxes have been removed from the building and “released back into the wild," the spokesperson said. They said they believe the situation is resolved.
“The university is conducting a building assessment to identify the location of where the foxes might have gained access and, at this time, it is not expected to be an ongoing situation,” the spokesperson said.
Capturing the third fox was “tricky,” said Bailey Duncan, an information desk supervisor. To capture it, they used a humane trap, and the fox kept trying to remove the food within the trap, said Duncan, a junior studying finance.
Audrey Sparks, a freshman studying computer science, was doing homework Monday night at the MU at a booth, when she noticed something moving in the basement rafters.
“I thought it was a pigeon,” she said. “Then I saw the tail swirling around, and I thought it was a cat.”
Karstein Kyle Gayo, a freshman studying business finance planning, was also with Sparks and began to record on his phone.
The two would realize it was not a cat. Initially, Kyle Gayo thought it was a possum or some other animal. In the video, a fox can clearly be seen scrambling into an opening near the ceiling of the roof of the basement and Kyle-Gayo’s voice can be heard asking Sparks, “What the f--- is that?”
Kyle Gayo submitted the video to the Tempe Barstool account. The post has received over 5,000 likes.
Foxes have been spotted in Tempe and around the campus before. A post on the ASU subreddit from April 2019 asking about foxes on campus had multiple comments with students stories of seeing them.
An ABC 15 article from February 2016 reported two foxes spotted by students.
Duncan, the student worker in the MU, recalls seeing them near residence halls in the past. This was the first time she had heard of any being indoors.
Reach the reporter at wmyskow@asu.edu and follow @wmyskow on Twitter.
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Wyatt Myskow is the project manager at The State Press, where he oversees enterprise stories for the publication. He also works at The Arizona Republic, where he covers the cities of Peoria and Surprise.
